


a deed without a name

by heartunsettledsoul, onceuponamirror, singsongsung, stillscape, sylwrites



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Buckle in kids, Canon-Typical levels of Violence, Character Death, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, M/M, tags will also update!, this is a s2 rewrite project and we're all nuts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-06-18 22:39:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 76,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15496266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartunsettledsoul/pseuds/heartunsettledsoul, https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceuponamirror/pseuds/onceuponamirror, https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung, https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/pseuds/stillscape, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylwrites/pseuds/sylwrites
Summary: They all felt it then: change, delivered right into the heart of the town through the barrel of a gun.A season two rewrite project.[Discontinued.]





	1. paradise lost

_This is how the world ends._

_This is how the world ends._

_This is how the world ends._

He read that poem when he was twelve, surrounded by a fortress of library books, swelling with angst faster than he outgrew his jeans and staving off a rumbling desire to check at the window every time he heard the dim roar of an engine across the trailer park.

(His mom was coming home later every night around then, and the part of him that didn’t think _twelve-meant-nearly-thirteen,_ which was practically an _adult,_ was worried about that.)

Jughead read the poem again in freshman English, in the back of the class, unwilling to dedicate himself to admitting to the teacher that he was very familiar with the waxing of T.S. Eliot, because that would mean opening his mouth.

And normally, he would’ve been happy to, but Reggie Mantle was in that English class. And Reggie Mantle had then been in the particular habit of dumping out the pages of Jughead’s binder when he seemed to think Jughead wasn’t being invisible enough.

(It hadn’t mattered; Betty had answered the questions, her hand ramrod straight in the air, and Reggie still threw Jughead’s hat across the hallway.)

He hasn’t read the poem a third time, but he doesn’t think he has to. He gets the message by now.

 

**

The call comes in halfway through a box of three-day-old kung pao chicken and the familiarly scattered attempt to once again distill his life’s meaning back into the old camping backpack he’d gotten at the thrift store last year. The pack, itself innocent enough, lies plainly across his father’s bed, contents half-spilling out around it like strewn innards following a fatal crash.

Granted, he’s already gathered up the bulk of his things from the Andrews house. He was gifted an afternoon by the social worker to return to his father’s trailer in order to pick up the rest before being carted off to his new foster family sometime tonight—and if the social worker didn’t know he’d actually left from the Andrews house last night, rather than this morning as she thought, maybe that was a secret worth keeping.

(Maybe he’d wanted one last sleep in the trailer out of nostalgia and bitterness and something else entirely. Maybe he’d wanted that _something else entirely_ with Betty.)

Now, Jughead sorts through the essentials, leaving him once more with the childhood picture of himself and Jellybean, the _Pulp Fiction_ movie poster he’d slogged around to-and-fro, his most essential clothing options—and this time, another picture, the one he’d returned here to get, not yet creased at the corners or folded down the middle.

His father had taken it outside the Cooper house; him and Betty, before they left for homecoming, her in a silvery dress, him a suit that actually fit for once, happy and smiling, just before his life fell apart.

Again.

His stomach lurches. Like the last time he’d filled up this bag with the intent to leave the trailer in shadow, his arms swing through the air bitterly, throwing his extra pair of jeans into the backpack with just enough force to remind him of his frustration with the situation.

A foster family, because _of course_. Of course his entire world was rapidly devolving into the life of a kid on an after school special. The trailer park, the disenfranchised mom, the deadbeat dad—it clearly wasn’t enough cliché for one person to satisfy the powers that be.

Irritated, Jughead shoves his extra pair of black jeans far down into the bottom of the bag.

But he can’t be mad at Fred, not really—he definitely can’t fault a DUI, when the reason Jughead  _has_ this backpack in the first place was because he was sick and tired of his own father’s drinking. Yet, at the same time, Fred was supposed to be…different. Because growing up, Fred was, often, everything FP would not (or could not) be; kind, giving, present, and good.

And whenever Jughead felt adrift, the Andrews felt like shore.

Meaning, Fred was supposed to be above whatever ghost of a petty wastrel had inhabited FP. Safe haven. A shelter to count on, if it came to that. He was always Jughead’s last resort, but recently had been feeling like less of one. The Andrews had stopped feeling quite like a place to wait out a storm and more a home.

Because he’d _liked_ getting up every morning to coffee and eggs, he’d _liked_ not having to butt elbows when trying to get a turn at one bathroom, he’d _liked_ being able to go out the front door and see Betty waiting for him on her own stoop, the smile on her face when she’d spot him.

That’d been his favorite part. Her, just over a fence.

And that daily walk to school with Betty and occasionally Archie had felt like—it’d felt normal. And he’d gotten used to it.

_First mistake._

All things considered, however, when he said a foster home on the south side hadn’t sounded completely terrible, he hadn’t been lying.

There were parts of his side of town that he missed—for one, on the south side, he never got sidelong up-and-downs at the grocery store or got bothered going home. And truthfully, he wouldn’t mind not always seeing the look on people’s faces when he and Betty walked hand in hand together, expressions swimming with the obvious thought of: _her?_ And _him?_

(Then again, he figured it’d be something similar on his side of town, just reality in reverse. There was no fully avoiding it when stars liked to cross.) (He knows Betty would tell him he’s over-imagining things, that people don’t really care—but he thinks he knows the world a bit better sometimes.)

Still.

There was a bit of a lullaby in the white noise of a trailer park; the revving of motorcycle engines, the steady humming from the nearby highway overpass, the traveling sound of laughter and crackling fires as people wandered in and out of each other’s trailers, having impromptu barbecues and parties.

Or, even when he was at the drive-in, he’d gotten used to the close-by lumbering of a train, the occasional honk and whistling wind. And then, sometimes, when he was with the Andrews, lying awake on an air mattress in the middle of the night, he’d feel as though things were just too quiet. He’d almost wished Archie snored, just to give him something to listen to.

And there were other, more buried parts that he missed too. Jughead knows—he _knows_ —that people on the south side take care of each other because there is no other option, that it isn’t something worth romanticizing when it has such a seedy underbelly lying in wait, but for as much as the north side preached _love thy neighbor,_ he’d grown up with the distinct impression that only one side of town actually did.

Shaking his head to clear the thought, Jughead lets the pack fall back against his father’s mattress, and goes to the closet to sift through the rest of his clothes, some of which he hasn’t seen since the last time he left the trailer.

Leaving the Andrews this morning with a fuller pack than when he’d arrived, he’d realizing how much more he’s accumulated since staying there, but decides he still should probably take a couple of his extra layers and Sherpa jackets, given the heavy chill still lingering in the air that won’t let up till spring.

Then again, it’s not like he’s running out of a house on fire. He got the name of the family he’ll be staying with, and he recognizes it; the Topazes live just at the other end of Sunnyside. He’s seen Thomas Topaz around the park his whole life, and knows he could be stuck with far worse people. Too no-nonsense to really be nice, but too wizened to really be cruel, it was the kind of moral ground Jughead was used to.

Ideally, Thomas Topaz might not mind Jughead coming back to the trailer now-and-then, and not just to pick up a change of clothes.

 _Ideally,_ Thomas Topaz may not care if coming back to the trailer now-and-then turns into crashing at the trailer for a couple of days.

 _Ideally,_ Jughead thinks as he sifts through the closet he shared with his father, _Thomas Topaz will be just as absent a figure as most adults end up being._

And then, Jughead’s eyes freeze over a hanger.

Unable to help himself, his fingers reach forward and trail themselves over the soft, supple leather, drawn forward towards the flame. Upon first touch, instantly, a small rush of security careens forward—no matter if he doesn’t actually _wear it,_ the gift of the leather jacket still came with an offer of safety that makes him feel foolish and young in a way he hates to admit he still craves, like a child seeking comfort after a nightmare or hearing rain on a tin roof but being warm and safe inside.

Slowly, he pulls the jacket off the hanger. It feels heavier than he remembers it being, even though it was barely last night that it was bequeathed to him in an offer of support. Absentmindedly, he holds it in his grip, thumb rubbing along a seam.

And then, with a flash, he sees Betty’s confused face through the crack of a door, and he drops it like a hot poker onto the bed. But it falls down facing upwards, exposing the patch to the ceiling so that the little yellow eyes of the embroidered snake feel like they bore right through him.

 _You’ll need me with you, where you’re going,_ it seems to hiss, half mocking.

The phone rings.

Blinking rapidly so as to shake the blurring image of the snake before him, Jughead pivots around his father’s bedroom, digging through the piles of books and clothes for the source of the sound. Finally, he finds his cell phone under a mountain of socks, and sees that it’s Betty on caller ID. With a pang, he sees that there are a couple of missed calls from her, ones he must’ve not heard while he was staring at his father’s shaving cream in the bathroom.

His throat tenses up automatically; they haven’t talked about what happened last night, both in terms of the Serpents and in terms of what they might’ve  _interrupted_. He wonders which thought makes him more nervous.

“Hey,” he greets softly, deciding to answer despite his gut kicking up a familiar dust of _run._

“Jug,” Betty croaks over the phone, and he knows at once that something is wrong.

She appears to strangle over the words for another tense couple of seconds, and then finally, on a shaky exhale, she says, “You need to come to the hospital. R-right now. Fred’s been shot.”  
 

**

For a long, painful moment, he feels as though his brain has completely stopped working.

It’s an unfamiliar feeling, one that didn’t even surface as he sat through grainy footage of Jason Blossom being shot. Even then, his mind had been whirring, seeing the puzzle, piecing it together. But now, after Betty’s voice breaks on a goodbye and repeating his assurance that he’d be there right away, Jughead’s head runs empty.

He sways on his feet, feeling dizzy.

Fred was shot. Fred was _shot_. _Fred_ was shot? How could _Fred_ be shot? All-American Jason Blossom had been hard enough to stomach, but there had at least been something so morbidly poetic about it that it had almost felt inevitable, damned as it is to admit.

But Fred? This isn’t _Chinatown_ , for chrissakes, this is Riverdale, the town with _pep._

He swallows and, channeling Betty’s taste for tunnel vision, propels himself into action, because there is no way forward without it. Shoving his phone and wallet into his pockets, he staggers towards the front door of the trailer, trying to focus on logistics despite feeling wan and pale.

There won’t be time for his usual method of transportation, i.e., walking, and he hasn’t willingly jogged in years and isn’t sure he could make it all the way there without collapsing, so he reasons he’ll have to call a Dryft car despite having blown nearly his last dollar on a stupid, ill-fated bus ticket to Ohio.

He’s nearly out the door when he spots the keys in the bowl, sitting innocuously on the round little kitchen table.

The keys to the trailer, the keys to his father’s motorcycle, and—the new keys to the spare one.

The bike his father had recently finished fixing for him, however haphazardly. It’d been one of those things mentioned during their phone calls while he was with the Andrews, aware of Fred and Archie in the background, trying not to pretend they were hovering protectively. FP had brought it up casually, but in a forced way, like it was part of some secret message to decode.

_I got you a bike, kid. Nothing fancy. Bought it off Junkyard Steve and fixed it up for you. You know, if you ever need to get around, or wanna go for a ride with your old man._

_If you ever come home,_ but he didn’t say that.

Jughead stares at the keys, swallows, and grabs them.

Probably cooked up as some kind of backwards, dangerous attempt at patrilineal bonding, he’s had a few riding lessons with his dad over the years; in retrospect, definitely starting when he was way too young. And he’s rusty for sure, and he’s barely had his driver’s license for a month, but adrenaline and fear for Fred overpowers the trepidation, so he closes the trailer door behind him and stumbles forward towards the bike parked just outside, patiently waiting underneath its tarp, safe from the fresh and unseasonably early snow.

Jughead feels his chest tighten as he reaches forward to pull off the white tarp, billowing gently against the frigid air. The bike is smaller and older than his father’s, but admittedly far sturdier looking than Jughead had anticipated, and anyway, there isn’t time to hesitate.

So, he plucks off the spare helmet from the top of the metal trash cans, the one he’d carved a stupid little crown into when he was thirteen, both out of boredom and early stage disillusionment, and mounts the bike.

It revs beneath him, and he can’t describe the feeling.

**  
  
**  
  
**

**

  
  
Betty hangs up the phone to Jughead’s fevered and urgent _I’ll see you soon,_ but the promise does little to quell the shaking in her heart that travels right down her arm and into her hand. She stares at the cell phone rattling in her grip, and then closes her eyes, willing herself to count backwards from ten until her breath runs steady again.

Like a barricade to a besieged castle door, she knows it won’t hold forever. Her chest thumps along in tandem to the imagined battle at the gates, but it’ll do. Her thoughts just need to wait out Fred’s surgery, and then things will be okay enough for her to process what’s happened.

Because he _will_ be okay—he will. He has to be.

“Jug’s on his way,” Betty says, forcing a soft, kindly voice, crouching down in front of the slumped figure of Archie. “Okay, Arch? We’re all here for you.” He nods dimly, eyes never quite leaving the floor, but flicking up just enough to acknowledge her in front of him.

She stares at him, her eyebrows needling as her attention trails down to the smattering of blood all over his clothes and arm cast, unsure what else to say and her throat running dry once more.

He hasn’t moved from this spot since staggering down into the seat; hasn’t even fully met anyone’s eye since getting off the phone with his mom. But Betty can see him shaking, almost imperceptibly, because there’s a limp strand of his hair that quivers across his forehead.

Her eyes flick to Veronica, sitting beside him. She meets her gaze at once, sharing a wordless, meaningful glance before closing her eyes tightly, a balled fist underneath her chin.

Betty bites at her lip, and gets to her feet. The background noises of hospital ongoings run like a stalled car in her head; various commands being shouted across the nearby emergency room, wheels squeaking as hospital beds get pushed down a nearby hallway. Even the waiting area where they sit smells sterile and foul all at once.

_It isn’t supposed to be like this._

Jason’s murderer was caught, Polly is back home, her parents are speaking to each other again, she and Jughead are in love, her other pair of best friends are now together—things were turning in their favor, finally. Things are supposed to be _normal_ now. Things are supposed to be _better_.

Otherwise, what the hell was the point of everything they just went through? What was the _point_ of catching a killer and seeking justice, if not to protect everyone from it happening again?

 _It isn’t supposed to be like this,_ she thinks again, and more forcefully this time.

“Everything is going to be fine,” she says aloud, and definitely more to herself. Neither Archie nor Veronica are looking at her, barely even acknowledging her, let alone moving, but Betty feels like she has to do or say something useful or she’ll shred the sleeves off her sweater.

“Look, I’m gonna get us some coffee, okay? That’ll be nice, right? Something warm in our stomachs?” She poses it as a question despite herself, hoping it’ll get them to look at her, to validate her desire to help.

“Okay,” Archie mumbles distractedly, eyes still downcast, and he leans over across his cushioned bench and folds up, as if attempting to go to sleep.

Veronica watches him worriedly, nibbling her lip between her teeth, and then she straightens and rises onto her heels. “Lovely idea. In fact, I’ll come with you, B,” she says, calm but clearly strained.

Betty opens her mouth to suggest she stay with Archie and keep him company, even if he wants to sleep, but clearly as if anticipating that, Veronica has already woven her arm through Betty’s with just enough force to imply she doesn’t want to hear it.

Just as they round the waiting area, Kevin and his father jog into sight, looking winded and bewildered. Sheriff Keller is out of uniform and wearing hang-dogged exhaustion, offering Kevin a brief pat on the arm before disappearing towards the main desk with a business-like demeanor.

“Is it true?” Kevin blurts, as soon as his father is out of earshot. “Was Fred Andrews really—”

“Fred will be fine. He’s in surgery right now, but the doctors say his chances are good,” Betty interrupts evenly, her eyes flashing warningly. Now really isn’t the time for gossip, even if she knows Kevin doesn’t mean to be insensitive. His attention flicks briefly to Veronica at her side, and he seems to deflate with guilt, as if realizing himself. “Can you do us a favor, Kev, and keep an eye on Archie while we go get some coffee for him?”

Kevin’s whole face softens. “Of course. Text me if you need anything else,” he says somberly, briefly squeezing Veronica’s hand. A look of discomfort passes over her face, so immense that it briefly gives Betty pause.

Arm in arm, Betty and Veronica silently stride down a hospital hallway. They pass Mayor McCoy and Josie rushing the way they’d just come, both briefly glancing at the pair of them with anxiety palpable across their faces, and hear the carrying voices of what sounds like the football team just before they round a corner off the path towards the waiting room.

Veronica’s grip on Betty tightens.

After what feels like ages, they come across a little kiosk with a Keurig coffee machine and an offering of paper cups and wooden stirrers. Veronica practically collapses against the wall beside it, eyes once more squeezing shut as Betty busies herself with starting up the first coffee.

Her phone buzzes in her back pocket, and she clicks it on to a text from her mother demanding to know where she is. That means Alice doesn’t know about Fred, but Betty doesn’t think she can make it through explaining what’s happened to yet another person. She’d almost lost the composure she’s still desperately trying to hold onto when she told Jughead what’d happened, and can’t do it again.

Not yet.

She ignores the text, and shoves the phone back into her jeans.

“I can’t handle this,” Veronica murmurs, echoing Betty’s thoughts as the Keurig noisily whirs to life. Betty glances at her, and Veronica briefly opens one eye, still painted black with the perfect cat-eye. Her head falls back against the wall with a dull _thump_. “I did _not_ sign up for this.”

“No one signs up for this kind of thing, V,” Betty says slowly, prepping another coffee pod for the machine, needing her hands to keep themselves occupied, lest they start shaking with the desire to curl inwards again.

(A desire she hasn’t had in ages, and yet—)

She exhales, finding her train of thought again. She thinks of Polly, her life with Jason felled before it could even begin. “No one ever thinks this kind of thing will happen. No one can be prepared for—”

“God, though, look at this nightmare of a town,” Veronica interrupts, sputtering over a bitter laugh. “You’d think we should’ve seen this coming. You know, I lived in a crime capital for years and never dealt with this level of sadistic mayhem until coming here.”

Betty doesn’t quite know what to say, but pushes herself to find the words, despite not knowing what to make of Veronica’s newfound sense of animosity. It feels like the wrong moment to suddenly go 180. “Veronica, I know you’re worried, but Fred is going to be fine, and you and Archie are going to get through this. Jug and I are going to help, and things will—”

“Things will _what,_ Betty? _What?_ Magically get better if we just wish upon a star hard enough?” Veronica’s voice is strange and pitched, somehow cold and manic all at once. “No one ever fully comes back from this kind of thing. And I am the _last_ person who should be entrusted to help someone right now, believe me.”

Betty frowns, and pauses her prep of the third coffee. “That’s not true.”

But Veronica crosses her arms in the posture of an insolent child, lips pressed together. “Yes, yes it is. You’ve only ever known me here. You don’t know what I’m really—” She cuts herself off, but it does little to stop the rising steam. “I’m not a naturally empathetic person, B. Don’t give me that look—I’m—I’m not. When my grandfather passed, I had to be absolutely dragged to his funeral by my parents. And I _adored_ my grandfather, but I threw a tantrum rather than go honor his memory. And when a girl in my year at Spence lost her mom, you know what I said to her?”

Veronica spits out another choked laugh. “I told her it was a good thing Upper East Side men remarry quickly, so she wouldn’t be without a mother for long. Who _says_ that?”

Betty bites at her lip, but the other girl has pushed off from the wall and started pacing, rapidly rising with everything she couldn’t say in front of anyone else. “And right now, literally all I want to do is get the _hell_ out of this hospital and as far away from Archie as possible, no matter how much he might need me. You saw me back there, I couldn’t wait to run away from him! I’m just not a good person, no matter how I was fooling myself before. And obviously I shouldn’t have even bothered, because of course now I’m being tortured with an utterly _biblical_ amount of irony as punishment!”

“Stop, V, stop,” Betty insists, reaching forward to take one of Veronica’s hands, although she instinctively steps back, just out of reach. “You’re totally empathetic, and you _are_  definitely a good person, whatever…issues you may have had in the past. You’re still here. You helped us catch Jason’s killer, tried to help Jughead’s dad, after… I mean, remember when we fought, and you flew out cupcakes for me? That was so sweet.”

“Exactly!” Veronica’s arms fly up in the air around her. She’s never seen Veronica like this, erratic and pacing and unwound. “Exactly, Betty! The only ways I know how to comfort people are through cupcakes and mani-pedis and gift cards! What am I supposed to do, paint Fred’s nails in a hospital bed? How do I be the girlfriend to all of this?”

She lets out another acidic scoff that quickly gives way into something far more pained. “I can’t buy my way through this kind of comfort, and I—I—I can’t _do_ this,” she whispers with finality, though she does at last allow herself to be embraced by Betty, as if losing the battle to storm otherwise.

“You can,” Betty says soothingly, wrapping her arms around a just-barely-trembling Veronica. She wishes she had something more profound to say, but she was never the writer. She hopes Jughead gets here soon. She smoothes down Veronica’s hair, something her sister used to do for her. “I know you can handle this, V.”

There’s a long pause. Veronica sniffles against the fabric of Betty’s sweater. “How?”

Betty casts her eyes around the cold, gray atmosphere of the hospital hallway, her throat in danger of closing up. In her mind’s eye, she sees Archie again, covered in blood that isn’t his own. Somehow, this feels like the start of Jason Blossom all over again.

She squeezes Veronica tightly, disliking the answer but knowing it to be true. “Because you have to.”  
 

**

After Veronica has steeled herself—the process of which appears to include a round of deep breathing and the delicate readjusting of the hair around her face—the two girls make their way back towards the hospital waiting room, carrying five cups of coffee between them both.

(Veronica had needed another minute to collect herself, so Betty had busied herself with preparing two more; she was sure Kevin would want one too, and even though she figured it’d be a while before Jughead arrived, she had been grateful for something to do again, however small.)

As they round the corner, however, Jughead is already sitting next to Archie, his arms folded over as his elbows press into his knees. Kevin waits across from them, his leg jiggling. None of the boys are talking, and Archie hasn’t even moved from the slumped, horizontal position they left him in. Glancing around, Betty sees the waiting room has indeed filled up since they left; most of the football team is here, as well as Mayor McCoy, Josie, and her bandmates. Valerie has her head in hands.

Then Betty’s eyes flick onto Jughead and stay there, wondering how he got here so fast—the hospital is far north from his trailer—but decides not to dwell on the thought, considering how grateful she is to see him at all.

His face, stricken and pale, glances up towards her, almost as if her thoughts were loud enough to announce her arrival to him. Getting to his feet, he strides forward to help her with the coffees. Kevin mimics the motion, reaching forward to take the warm drinks from Veronica’s hands. She raises her neck a little, and clicks her heels off towards Archie.

With all the air of a dignified surrender, she sinks into the spot vacated by Jughead. One hand weaves around to grasp Archie’s own, and Veronica meets Betty’s eye, a grateful kind of look there.

Kevin blows out a noisy breath and lifts one of the coffees to his lips. “This is insane,” he says, but without his typical air of dramatic intrigue.

“Archie hasn’t said much. Any word from your dad about what the hell happened?” Jughead asks, as Betty passes him the coffee she made for him. As he meets her eye, his lips ghost around a small, rarely coy smile; it’s brief, but it brings a flash of last night, of his breath hot against her neck and suddenly knowing nothing but air and desire. She thinks she sees it again there, now, even if it’s just the memory of the feeling.

And then Jughead appears to catch himself, his expression flattening as he turns back to Kevin, who is shaking his head.

“He came back here before you arrived and tried to ask Archie some questions, but Archie’s kind of been…well, comatose, so he said he’d come back and try again after he talked to Pop.”

Jughead and Betty exchange glances; she’s sure the same bell went off in his head as did her own. “Why would your dad want to go to talk to Pop?” She asks, fingers tapping against the paper cup.

“Well…that’s where…it…” But Kevin trails off meaningfully, shifting foot to foot.

“Fred was shot at _Pop’s?”_ Jughead echoes, looking as though someone just punched him straight in the gut. “The place with the food? Jukebox? _That_ Pop’s?”

Kevin glances between the two of them, his eyebrows raised. “I thought you knew. Archie didn’t tell you?”

“He’s barely said a word since he got off the phone with his mom, and…I was trying not to eavesdrop…” Betty says slowly, her lips tugging downward.

“Jesus,” Jughead mutters, briefly lifting his hat off his head in order to rake his fingers through his hair. Forcefully, he shoves the wool beanie back on, his face even paler now, were it possible. “Is no place sacred anymore?”

Betty reaches forward and rubs Jughead’s arm; there is no option but towards the truth, it feels. “We should try to talk to Archie.”

He nods, almost distractedly, as if gears are turning in his head. “If we can get the picture of what happened and how… I mean, _how_ … Everything was…” Jughead sighs and scrubs a long hand down his face.

She thinks she understands what he’s feeling. How was it that, just last night, they were unspooling confessions of love and lighting a match between them? How had last night felt like the start of something new and better—given way to _this?_

Certain that only thing that will absolve the gnawing feeling in her stomach will be giving way to the search for answers, Betty passes Kevin one last soft glance before marching off towards the main waiting area, Jughead on her heels. They pull to a stop in front of Archie and Veronica; probably through a little coaching, she has gotten him to at least sit upright again.

“Hey dude,” Jughead says gently, licking his lips nervously. “Can Betty and I…talk to you for a minute?”

Slowly, Archie’s eyes trail upwards, rimmed as red as his hair. “Yeah, okay,” he says, after a long, scrutinizing moment. He stands up and, however unsteadily, follows them into a quiet corner, all of them pretending they don’t have half a dozen pair of eyes on them.

“I’m so sorry again, man,” Jughead says quietly, and Archie nods rapidly, as if trying to hold onto his composure. “We want to help, Betty and I. You don’t have to tell us anything you’re not ready to share, but—we were thinking we might go to Pop’s and try to get the full story. That way, we can…” But Jughead seems to lose his trail, as Archie grows visibly more uncomfortable before him.

He looks to Betty for help, and she steps forward. “We just want to get justice for your dad, Arch. Figure out what happened.”

Archie exhales, arms crossed tightly across his abdomen. His face, normally so readable, is pinched and closed off, although he at least appears to be considering her words. “Like you did for Jason Blossom?”

Betty feels her throat tighten yet again, and wonders if breathing will ever feel normal again. “Um, yes, but it’s diff—your dad is going to be fine, Archie. You know that, right?”

A second ticks by. “Yeah,” he replies, after another beat. He shifts and closes his eyes, as if it pains him to travel back through the memory. “Uh, we were getting breakfast at Pop’s. I went into the bathroom, and when I came out, there was this guy holding up the diner. He had—” He swallows. “He had a gun, and I think my dad tried to talk to the guy, like, talk him down or something, but then I came out, he saw me…and I guess the guy…maybe he panicked. Yeah. Like maybe didn’t expect for people to be there?”

Betty stares at him; Archie has never been a good liar, and perhaps it’s just grief manifesting in his voice, but something sounds wrong with the story in the way he told it. He flicks his eyes away from her, and that all but confirms it.

“That’s it?” Jughead asks, clearly trying to keep the same skepticism out of his voice. “It was just a robbery gone wrong?”

Archie visibly shudders, and then shrugs. “I don’t know.”

Another long moment stretches out between them, and then Jughead clears his throat. “Did you get a look at his face? Any distinguishing features?”

“No,” Archie says, and this time he doesn’t hesitate. “He was wearing some kind of mask.”

Betty blinks. “What kind of mask?”

“A ski mask, maybe? But creepier. It was just a big beanie that someone cut the eyes and mouth out of. Like something out of a horror movie.”

They both wait, but Archie doesn’t seem able, or willing, to offer anything else up, and Betty thinks it’s wise not to push him too much, even if her desire to keep needling hums beneath the skin. “Okay,” she says softly. “Okay, thanks Arch. I think Jug and I are gonna go talk to Pop and see if we can get a bit more information. Call us if your dad gets out of surgery before we get back?”

Dimly, Archie nods again, and wanders off back towards the waiting area, where Kevin and Veronica rise to greet him again.

As soon as he’s out of earshot, Jughead pivots towards her. “Did that whole thing sound fishy to you, or am I just that insensitive?”

Betty sighs, putting her hands on her hips. “I don’t know. I mean, you can’t really gauge how a person is going to react to their dad getting—I thought he was being kind of odd, but that could easily be shock.”

“Yeah,” Jughead agrees thoughtfully, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth as he runs through a thought. His hands fall limply at his sides. “Fair enough. Should we get going?”

“Probably. It’s gonna take us long enough to walk all the way across town,” Betty says on another exhale, smoothing over the top of her ponytail.

But Jughead just looks at her, and she raises an eyebrow. “What?”

He scratches at his jaw line. “About that.”

**  
  
**  
  
**

**

 

_Click._

_Click._

_Click._

Cheryl stifles a long-suffering sigh alongside the desire to roll her eyes at the receptionist once more. She’s been waiting here for upwards of half an hour now, and beginning to feel impatience seeping in at the already existent boredom.

 _Click_ goes the ballpoint pen again, as the receptionist absentmindedly fiddles with the cap, her attention down on the file in front of her, as it has been for ages.

_Click._

This time, Cheryl can’t help herself; she clears her throat, and re-crosses her legs pointedly. The long-faced receptionist glances up, bemused. “Yes?”

“I was only wondering how much longer Mr. Erlichman would be,” Cheryl says, summoning her most saccharine voice. “Considering my family practically paid for last year’s renovation of this lovely office, I would hardly expect to be kept waiting so long.”

The secretary stares back at her, expression twitching with something—knowing. And perhaps a bit mocking in that. Certainly not quite pity. “Of course, Miss Blossom,” she says, picking up her desk phone. “I’ll check again to see if he’s ready for you yet.”

She presses a button, has a short, terse conversation with the person on the other end of the line that is muffled enough that Cheryl cannot hear it from halfway across the room, and then hangs back up. “He’s just finishing up with something now, and will be able to see you shortly,” she says, a sour look on her haggard, lined face.

Cheryl nods, flicking her eyes off in the corner and deflating against the back of her chair. _Then nothing to do but wait,_ a small voice seems to instruct. And that’ll have to do; she’d chosen to play it this way, after all. Without much else to do, she runs her tongue along her teeth as she inspects the hem of her skirt, still specked with the soot from the fire.

Of course, technically, she could have changed her clothes. She’d made sure to plan for that option, remarkably calm as she’d left the Pembroke; remarkably calm as she packed and stashed a small trunk of her own clothes, treasures, and necessities in the woods just off the property; remarkably calm as she doused the rest of her family’s belongings in kerosene.

Then again, that remarkable calmness had been lingering beneath the skin since before Veronica forced her in front of the fireplace until her teeth no longer physically chattered, before Archie Andrews pulled her out of the frozen river, before—everything.

And the longer it sat with her, the more Cheryl began to wonder if it was ever calmness at all. She’d taken it to water, hoping to be absolved, but now it was like the chill of the river had iced over in her veins, solidified it, and no matter how long she’d sat in front of a fireplace, no matter how long she stood in front of the flames stoking over the only home she knew, that chill still refuses to leave her.

There when wood turned to ash and gathered at her lungs, there when was nothing left but the wailing of sirens and her mother’s screams. She was just cold. And she’s still cold.

Then again, perhaps this is less waxing and more practical, as her bare legs are certainly unhelped by the flimsiness of her skirt. At this point, however, she knows it wisest to stay in the dirtied white dove outfit as long as she can, and not just because changing outfits would raise suspicion as to why only some of her and Jason’s objects survived the fire untouched, but because there was still a game left to play. The fire had only been Act One.

She still has people to convince, public support to win back, a message to send. And it’d worked for Jackie Kennedy, emerging from the hospital still covered in the blood of her husband.

She smoothes down her skirt.

Another twenty minutes tick across the clock.

Finally, the office door opens and her family’s lawyer, Mr. Erlichman, appears in the threshold. A short, balding man, he does not move to greet her, which she supposes is par for the course; she’d seen him slinking around Thornhill plenty of times growing up, and never once did he introduce himself, let alone offer his hand to shake like he did for Jason.

Raising her head, Cheryl gets to her feet and crosses the room to meet him. “Thank you so much for agreeing to see me on such short notice,” she says, forcing a tremulous gratitude. “Knowing we have your support in this trying time is a balm on my weary, weary soul.”

His smile is listless. “Of course, Miss Blossom. Come with me,” he says, gesturing back towards the room he’d just emerged from. Her heels echo against the cool tile of the office as she passes through the doorway, and then she sinks into one of the stately, blood red leather chairs across from the grand maple desk.

Silently, he settles into his own chair, which squeaks beneath him despite his small stature. Tenting his fingers in front of him, he surveys her carefully, almost bored. She waits for his condolences, for his apologies for making her wait, for—anything. But his mouth does not budge from its thin line, and she realizes he won’t speak until she does.

“Well,” Cheryl intones eventually, her lips pulling back into a taught smile. “As you may have heard, Thornhill suffered a devastating fire last night.”

He raises his eyebrows. “I did receive that call, yes.” And then, as if the civility is physically being clawed out of him, he adds, “I also heard your mother was hospitalized. How is her prognosis?”

 _Spare me,_ she thinks. It was her moronic mother’s own fault for running back into the house to save that hideous family portrait, for god knows what reason. Her mother hated her father by the time of his death and certainly only ever cared for Jason, so why a painting of the four of them would be so important—she’ll never understand.

Aloud, however, she says, “Alas, Mother did suffer her share of burns. She’s resting now. Mercifully, my dear grandmother was up in the country at the time, for her health.” She presses a delicate hand to her collarbone. “I fear she might’ve not escaped those hellish flames otherwise.”

Mr. Erlichman gives her the same kind of look she got often from her father; unwilling to indulge her and wrestling near impatience. “Yes. Mercifully indeed,” he says vaguely, and at it, Cheryl cannot help but sit up straighter, wondering—does he suspect her?

He clears his throat. “So. Why are you here today, Miss Blossom?”

She exhales, to business. “Well, given the…state of our family affairs, and my mother’s hospital bills we’ll now need to add to our docket, I’d like to talk to you about what’s due to me. My inheritance. I am certain my father did not want me to be left without support, which unfortunately now I’ll need more than ever.”

For a long moment, the lawyer purses his lips, and Cheryl feels her own smile falter, just an inch. “Both of those things are true,” he ventures slowly, leaning forward over the desk. “Your father did draft a will with me several years ago. He left just over half of his fortune to you and your brother—and given what’s…transpired, I believe you will absorb Jason’s share.”

Cheryl’s smile unfurls as she folds her hands primly across her knee. “Perfect. What will—”

“However,” he interrupts pointedly, eying her. “However, that was before.”

She blinks. “Excuse me?”

Mr. Erlichman lobs a sharp look upon her. “Miss Blossom, I’ll be direct. Your father may have chosen to avoid arrest by his own means, but that doesn’t mean it all simply _went away._ You should know the FBI have already been to my office, and are currently en route for a search warrant of my records on your family’s…business dealings. Rest easy that I’ve made means to protect myself and thus your family as my clients, but as of now, all of your family’s funds have already been frozen; information I imparted with your mother yesterday, before the fire.”

She holds up a hand to her chest, and this time not for dramatic effect. For the first time since she dropped the candelabra onto a fuel-soaked rug, she feels her chest give an exorbitant tug.

Cheryl blinks again, iciness trickling down her back. “I’m sorry. _What?”_

“There’s an active federal investigation that’s only just begun, Miss Blossom,” Mr. Erlichman says, with all the air of speaking to a small child. “We both know money doesn’t grow on maple trees, and now the FBI knows it too.”

Cheryl raises her neck. “I don’t know what ghoulishness you’re referring to.”

His expression remains far from indulgent. “I think it’s in both of our best interests to be candid with one another, Miss Blossom.” She rubs at her arms, and he continues. “I was disappointed to hear of the fire, given it transpired a mere few hours after I informed your mother that the property was likely to be seized at some point in the investigation. Now it looks suspicious. I had hoped there would be a greater semblance of _tact_ involved here.”

His look is long and meaningful, and through gooseflesh rising all over her skin, Cheryl stares back at him, attempting to read between the thin lines. He suspects her. He’s accusing her. And then she realizes—it’s not her at all.

Rather, he thinks her _mother_ burned down the house. To protect the family from the investigation, to protect herself.

She can’t decide if it’s good that he underestimates her, or if she’s just annoyed that yet another person dares to.

Cheryl struggles to release the bubble in her throat, filing that thought away for later. That may work to her advantage, but for now, there are more pressing matters. “ _Fine._ What about Thistle House?”

Mr. Erlichman laces his fingers, for the first time appearing interested. “Is it still standing?”

“Yes. It was spared,” Cheryl says through gritted teeth. Because that was the plan. Thornhill would burn her father’s ghost down, and Thistle House would be her fresh start. That was the way out. “But it belongs to my grandmother. It should be safe from…the investigation, correct? This is… We’re _going_ to need a place to live.”

He’s silent just too long for Cheryl to get her answer. “I believe the intent was to seize the entirety of the Blossom estate, even temporarily. In cases like these, when the…product is still missing, property is one of the main ways to apply pressure. But…if the fire is ruled suspicious, possibly longer. Like I said, it won’t look good for your family’s case. Or for me. I’m sorry to be so blunt, Miss Blossom,” he adds, though he doesn’t sound it at all.

Cheryl swallows down the rise of bile in her chest. All of her planning, all of her careful certainties—the house will burn away the ruined memories, she will show her mother what she’s capable of, they will move into Thistle House, start anew, reborn of the past—gone.

She no longer feels remarkably calm.

But Mr. Erlichman isn’t finished. “Now, your grandmother did have a contingency plan for this type of situation. She has a small trust set up that should be protected, and a monthly stipend may be possible. But I cannot act until I meet with her. Where is she, currently?”

She briefly closes her eyes, trying to count that as a win, though it does little against the anvil of news he’s almost vengefully dropped on her. “Further up, near the border. At her favorite pastoral retreat, a location she’s unfortunately kept secret since the 60s,” Cheryl huffs.

“There’s no way to contact her?”

“Service is abysmal upstate, but I do have a phone number. Be warned, if someone named something ghastly like Starchild answers, you haven’t dialed incorrectly,” Cheryl sighs, reaching forward across the desk to scribble the number on a post-it note. “But…what am I supposed to do until then? Mother is still in the hospital, and I’d been counting— Where am I supposed to _live?”_

So fast she nearly misses it, his eyes roll upwards. “Miss Blossom, you _are_ a minor. If your mother is incapacitated, and your grandmother is unreachable, you will be taken in as a ward of the state.”

Her nails claw around the arm of the chair, finally snapping, finally allowing fury to lick up her sides and ensnare her last attempt at appeasing him. “Like some kind of common street urchin? Are you out of your impossibly miniscule mind? My reputation—my entire world—is already on thin ice, and now you’re suggesting I be dropped into a _Dickens novel?_ How much exactly was my father paying you for such impressive legal advice?”

Mr. Erlichman barely even reacts; she can’t help but think he loathes the position he’s in as much as she does. But where her father’s choices were beyond her control, it’d been his own choice to get in bed with dirty business. “Well. If that option is so unappealing to you, there are other possibilities.”

“Then by all means, enthrall me,” she snaps, lips curling forcefully around the words.

He sighs. “Miss Blossom, do you have any other family members in town?”

**  
  
**  
  
**

**

 

Betty sighs and reaches up to tighten her ponytail, as Jughead knows she does when preparing to focus.

She glances over at him, and Jughead can’t help but wish he could smooth out the expression knotting over her face. He hates seeing her like this—but he supposes the same kind of harried angst is lingering over his own features.

“Ready?” She asks somberly.

“As I’ll ever be,” Jughead replies, staring up at the entrance to the diner and wondering if he’ll ever be able to come here again without thinking of Fred, if he’ll ever be able to once again enjoy Pop’s as the sanctuary that it has been since he was old enough to figure out that when his parents fought, it was best that he leave the trailer.

Together, they walk up to the entrance.

Jughead thinks the little bell that greets them is suddenly far too insidious.

“Sorry kids, we’re closed,” Pop says, glancing at them mournfully from behind the counter. “I thought I’d locked that door.”

Jughead steps forward, hands in his pockets. “We don’t wanna bug you, Pop, but we just wanted to ask you a few questions about what happened to—”

But he stops cold, his attention darting down as something glitters in his peripheral vision. He feels like someone’s punched him all over again, as he stares down at the floor, where a pool of dark red blood sits, catching the light overhead.

“Pop…” Betty whispers, horrified, but he shakes his head.

“I’m not allowed to clean it up until the police come back,” he says, sighing deeply. A sallow sense of shame sits heavily over his features. “And anyway, you kids shouldn’t be here. I didn’t want anyone to see this, especially you guys. You should go. There was a… An accident.”

“No, Pop, we know what…what happened to Fred Andrews,” Betty insists, moving closer towards the counter.

“And we want to understand _how_ it happened,” Jughead adds, following her and sliding onto a stool.

“So we can help him. Get justice, you know?” She finishes, looking at him once more for confirmation. Eyes hard, he nods. She flicks her attention back to Pop, who exhales through his nose, rubbing down the countertop in front of them. “Please?”

After another moment of internal warring, Pop appears to cow to the expressively pleading face of his girlfriend, largely irresistible as it is. (Jughead would know.) “Alright,” he says with another sigh. “What do you kids want to know?”

“Archie said that it seemed like a robbery gone wrong,” Jughead starts, drumming his knuckles anxiously on the laminate. “Would you corroborate that?”

Pop doesn’t say anything just long enough for his opinion to be obvious. “This diner has been here since before the town itself has,” he says eventually. “You don’t stay in business that long and not come up against a little bit of trouble now and then.” He pauses, allowing time for Betty and Jughead to exchange another set of glances. “We’ve been held up before, throughout the years. My Gran had a lot of trouble with bootleggers in the thirties; there were the riots in ’79… And then about ten years ago, when the housing bubble burst and the economy crashed, the Serpents were pretty restless again. It got ugly.”

Jughead feels something in his chest sink slightly, although he knows he shouldn’t be surprised. His dad is currently in prison, after all, of course he runs with—well, people who might’ve held up a diner under duress. But—for some reason, hearing that is still just as strange and disturbing as the time Betty murmured that Polly told her all the Serpents were apparently drug dealers.

If Betty picks up on his mixed feelings, she doesn’t look it. Her eyes remain trained on Pop. “So you think it was the Serpents again? Or do you not think it was a robbery at all?”

But Pop is shaking his head. “In the past, the guys who have come in to rob us were pretty desperate. You can tell. They’re paranoid and rushed. This guy—he was different. His face was covered by—well, it was a black hood of sorts, but you could see his eyes, and they were cold as ice. It was only when he saw Archie come out of the bathroom that he started to act weird. But…kids, I can’t explain it, but it was like it was a performance, in case he left witnesses. Also,” he adds, inhaling, “he had a gun, and I believe Serpents are usually partial to switchblades.”

Betty is biting her lip in the way she does when she’s thinking, but Jughead’s mind is running with guns and blades. Pop has a point—his own father was pretty high up in the Serpents, and Jughead has never seen a gun around the trailer. And maybe that was something he worked hard to hide, but he’d seen his father out of sorts enough times that it feels unlikely.

“But that doesn’t _really_ rule out the Serpents,” Betty says distractedly, clearly still chugging through a thought. And then her head snaps up straight, briefly looking at Jughead, almost as if she’s worried she’s just said something offensive. His eyebrows furrow.

“No, but like I said—something about the whole thing felt strange. It felt more like a deliberate attack, to tell you the truth,” Pop replies, his eyes sagging with something mournful.

If it wasn’t the Serpents—who would go around in a mask cornering people with a gun? Was it some kind of opposing gang, a territorial thing? But then why send a single person? Maybe he was meant to be seen as a messenger?

“Did he actually take anything?” Jughead asks, forcing the question against the deeper concerns bobbing in his throat.

“Some cash.” Pop shrugs. “But like I said, the whole thing felt…off.”

Betty appears to be taking notes on her phone, and there’s a long beat as his words settle in like a shroud of dust. He smiles then, a certain amount of force behind the cheeriness. “Hey, how about I make you kids something to eat? Get you some brain food?”

At the same time that Betty says, “Oh no, we couldn’t,” Jughead grins and says, “I could eat, yeah,” and both of them promptly swivel around to stare at one another. Betty gives him an almost offended look, to which he just shrugs.

There’s another moment of silence. “It would be nice to do something with my hands, Betty,” Pop says, the smile dimming. His face looks even more ashen now without it, and Jughead can tell Betty is noticing the same thing.

“Of course then, Pop,” she sighs. But she orders just a small coffee, whereas Jughead takes him up on the offer of his usual burger and fries. As soon as he’s disappeared into the kitchen, she turns another annoyed look on to Jughead. “How can you want to eat at a time like this?”

Jughead scratches at his temples, just beneath the hat. “I’m a stress eater, Betts. You know that.”

She half-shakes her head, and then buries it in her hands for a single breath. When she finally exhales, she raises her neck back up and slides her arms forward across the counter, as if trying to physically push away her thoughts. “Okay. Let’s go over what we know. It was either a robbery gone wrong, or… some kind of Serpent or gang attack, right?”

“Pop just said he _didn’t_ think it was the Serpents,” Jughead replies, eyebrows wrinkling into the valley of his forehead. Did they not just hash this through with Pop? Was she not listening at all?

Betty blinks at him. “No, all Pop said was that the guy didn’t seem desperate, like some stick ups were in the past. And that it wasn’t the typical Serpent weapon, but that doesn’t really prove anything either way. This is America, after all. Guns are easy to get.”

He considers this, unsure how they came out of the exact same conversation with totally different interpretations of it. “Well, then I guess we should talk to the Serpents. Try to see if we can at least rule them out.”

She’s silent for another long stretch, thoughtfully nibbling on her bottom lip. And then, in a much softer voice, “Is that really such a good idea?”

Jughead narrows his eyes. “What do you mean?”

Betty looks strangely cornered. But like she can’t help herself, the words tumble out anyway. “It’s—just— They gave you a _jacket,_ Jug,” she says, mouth wrapping around the words meaningfully.

“Oh,” he replies, relaxing. “Betts, that doesn’t mean what you think it means. I’m not suddenly _in_ the gang. It was just a gesture; a symbol.”

“I know,” she near-whispers. “That’s what I mean. When I went home last night, I started doing some googling, and—”

“Betty,” he interrupts. He knows she’s just trying to help, to look out for him, and he appreciates that, but the last thing they have time for is for her to worry over nothing, especially when they have far more looming, pressing issues. “I’m not joining the Serpents. Giving me the jacket was way more about my dad than anything; they were just making an overture, you know, out of gratitude. Saying they’ll look out for me, for him. I barely have anything to do with it.”

She doesn’t look convinced.

“What my dad did for them was a big deal,” Jughead continues, sighing. “Keller wanted him to fold on a lot of other things, a lot of other _people,_ in exchange for a lighter sentence. A lot of families could’ve been destroyed if my dad had taken the offer. A lot of lives ruined. But he took the fall. That _means_ something to them, and to me. It was…brave.” As he hears it, there’s awe in his voice, and he realizes it’s the first time he’s spoken of his father in this way in—years. He takes a moment, and then, “So if he trusts them…so do I.”

Betty’s face softens, and she reaches out to grasp his hand. She holds it there for a long moment, long enough for him to feel the rapid hum of her pulse as his fingers trail over her wrist. Nodding, she says, “Okay. Okay.”

He smiles, oddly relieved. “Which is why I think I can talk to some of them about this. You know, my dad’s mentioned that there’s this rival gang in Greendale that’s pushing in on Riverdale from the south. Maybe this was some kind of—territorial message. I bet some of the Serpents could give us some information. They owe me that.”

“But what if—I’m not saying all the Serpents—but what if there was a stray Serpent who went off on his own and did this? What if us poking around over there tips that person off and then they come after _you,_ Jug?”

Jughead shakes his head. “I think I’m safe, big picture. I’m under the protection of the majority of Serpents, by default. Really,” he adds, at her look. “I grew up around this stuff, even if I didn’t always realize it. I at least vaguely get how it works.”

She blows out a long breath, seeming to acquiesce to his point.

“Besides,” he throws out, “since I’m about to be living back over there and going to _school_ over there, I’d like to not be quite so paranoid about my fellow man on the street as I am on the average day. I’d rest easier if I could know Fred’s shooter might not be in my third period English class, you know?”

The reminder of his imminent transfer to Southside appears to drop like a stone over her expression. She drops her head down, staring into her lap. “Right,” she says, more to herself. She rolls her lips into a _pff_ sound, and when she speaks again, her voice is ductile. “How’d the rest of your packing go?”

His lips lift. “Went a lot faster than if you’d stayed last night,” he says lowly, which gets her to look at him again. A small grin unfolds over her face, clearly retracing the same memory of last night.

 _She loves me,_ he thinks, and not for the first time since waking up this morning.

Just then, Pop emerges from the kitchen, Betty’s coffee and Jughead’s burger in his hands. He slides the plate in front of Jughead, whose stomach gives a timely swerve of hunger. “Let me know if you kids need anything else,” Pop says, sighing once more as he glances at the pool of blood on the ground. Jughead had nearly forgotten it was there, and thinks Pop might feel the same way. “I’m gonna lock up, and then I’ll be in the back.”

A minute later, the entrance is sealed, and Pop disappears once more behind the kitchen door.

Betty watches him eat for a moment. “Do you know anything about the foster family yet? If they’re nice?”

He shrugs, chewing. “I know their name. The social worker is coming back over to the trailer tonight to escort me over there, which is stupid because it’s a five-minute walk. But it’s a guy and his granddaughter—I’ve seen them both around Sunnyside pretty much forever. I think the wife died a few years ago, but I don’t know much else. Granted, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a conversation with someone my age that comes from my tax bracket,” he adds, grinning, but Betty doesn’t return it. She still seems lost in thought.

“Juggie.” He can tell by the way she says his name that she’s choosing her words carefully. “Maybe you should call your mom? You don’t _have_ to go into the system.”

Scoffing loudly, he shoves a fry into his mouth. “No way am I doing that again,” he mutters, thinking of how stupid and small he’d felt after calling her from the bus stop. _(I’m sorry, baby, it’s just—things here are complicated and the space is small—I wish I could explain)_ “Besides, I know how that would play out, even if I could get a hold of her. I’d have to go to Ohio, Betty. And I don’t want to leave you or Archie. Trust me, I don’t think she’s planning on ever coming back here.”

“Maybe she would, though. For you,” she counters gently, and while he normally appreciates Betty’s bullheaded sense of optimism—craved being around it quite often growing up, actually—right now, he wishes she could just _understand_ what it’s like to have a detonated nuclear family. He wishes he knew anyone who would understand, frankly. But Betty has that look in her eye that tells him she won’t drop this easily. “And shouldn’t she at least know what’s going on? With your dad?”

His lip curls. “If it’s really that important, someone will tell her. Dad can make phone calls in jail, if he wants. But I don’t want Jellybean… I don’t want her thinking of me like…that.”

Betty doesn’t ask _like what,_ and he’s glad, because he’s even not sure what he means by it.

They’re both quiet as Jughead finishes up the rest of his burger.

He’s certain he can hear her brain working, but for the first time in months, he has no desire to know what she’s thinking.

Eventually, when he’s polished off his burger and they’ve bid goodbye to Pop and done their best not to look down at the floor again, they leave the diner. Betty looks at the motorcycle parked outside in the same way she looked at it before—bemused.

But then she moves to mount it. And when he doesn’t budge, she looks confused. “Aren’t we going to the south side? To talk to some Serpents?”

He inhales. “Um, I think I should probably go alone,” he says, absolutely hating the way her face falls. He wants to go back to last night again, and feels it slipping between his fingers like grains of sand. “It’s just—I think they’d be a lot more receptive to just me. My dad always said that snakes fear the unfamiliar,” he adds, though her nose wrinkles at that.

She appears to think it over, and then slides back off the bike. “Well…okay. I guess I should go back to the hospital and check on Archie. And Veronica. They were both a total mess. Maybe Fred will be out of surgery by then,” she adds, though she doesn’t sound particularly hopeful.

“I’ll give you a ride, at least,” he offers.

“No, I want to walk,” she sighs, rubbing at her arms. “I want to think, anyway.”

He frowns. “It’s more than two miles back to the hospital.”

“It’s fine, really,” she replies, words both said and unsaid lingering between them. “Let me know what you find out?”

“Of course,” he says, exhaling. “Call me when Fred’s awake, too?” She nods, and starts to go, and for some reason, his chest feels like it might cave in. “Betty?”

She pivots back to him. “Yeah?”

“I love you,” he says, because he can. Because he’s not afraid of those words anymore, and it feels strangely urgent that she know it.

Her expression melts, softening all over into a radiant smile that he wants to covet and treasure, knowing it’s just for him. “I love you too,” she echoes, and then she’s gone.

**

He’s not exactly sure what he expects when he pulls up to the Whyte Wyrm on his own motorcycle; certainly not a crew of people to manifest at the doors welcoming him in as heir apparent, but as he kills the engine, the looks he get range from the friendly to the smug to the outright annoyed. And quite frankly, he isn’t sure what to do with any of those reactions, even in the vaguely familiar faces, so Jughead makes to move past them all and enter into the bar where he suspects his father’s friends are. It’s somewhere to start, anyway.

“Jones,” someone calls from behind him, and he turns on the spot, recognizing the voice as belonging to a kid his age from Sunnyside. The door swings behind him and the other boy flanked at his side, one Jughead also only vaguely recognizes, and he guesses they followed him inside. “Knew it was only a matter of time.”

The voice is friendly enough, but surveying all the same, and Jughead can’t help but feel like he’s being sized up, and for more than one reason. A name materializes in the back of his thoughts, information he’d received on a vague play-date from upon long ago. “Uh, hey. Francis, right?”

The other boy snickers, and the taller one shoves him back a step. “Shut up,” he snaps at him, and then glances back at Jughead. “It’s Sweet Pea now.”

Truthfully, Jughead isn’t sure that _Sweet Pea_ is that much better than _Francis,_ but he also knows about the old adage with pots and kettles. His name is _Jughead_ , after all. “Okay. Hey, Sweet Pea,” he corrects, trying and failing to keep the dryness out of his voice. “I’m looking for Tall Boy. Is he here?”

“Probably,” Sweet Pea replies, folding his arms and looking down over them imperiously. “Heard you got a jacket. You here to make it official? I’m the one you want to talk to.”

“Uh, no,” Jughead mumbles. “I just have a question for Tall Boy.”

This clearly isn’t the answer Sweet Pea expected. He and the other boy glance at one another, miffed. “Whatever,” he says eventually, and points towards the back.

Jughead follows his finger and spots the familiar mane of brown hair at the bar, quietly nursing a beer. He barely notices Jughead as he approaches, but when he does spot him, he lowers the drink, surveying Jughead in the same way Sweet Pea did.

“Hey, Junior,” he greets, though there’s something about the nickname that sounds like a dig. “Didn’t expect to see you around here so soon.”

“I just wanted to cash in on one of those favors you mentioned,” Jughead says, settling onto the opposite barstool.

Tall Boy raises his eyebrows. “That didn’t take long.”

“There are kind of extenuating circumstances,” Jughead explains. “And they’re time sensitive.”

He inclines his head. “Alright.”

Eying him for a reaction, Jughead says, “There was a robbery and a shooting at Pop’s this morning.” Tall Boy absorbs this with an inhale, shoulders rising, but otherwise, his face remains impassive. “Do you know anything about it? I was wondering if it might’ve been a territorial attack from that gang from Greendale my dad mentioned.”

Tall Boy taps a finger against his beer bottle. “The Ghoulies? Yeah, maybe. That’d be something they’d do—they’re all off their goddamn rockers, and they’ve been looking to encroach on us for a while. I’ll look into it for you.”

“Thanks,” Jughead says, halfway off the stool when another thought occurs to him. “You don’t think it could’ve been a rogue Serpent, do you? There’s no reason for one to attack a random Northsider, right?”

Tall Boy’s eyes fix sharply upon him. “We ain’t got a death wish,” he says finally.

“Right,” he murmurs. “But if someone was strapped for cash?”

“I’d be careful of who you go around accusing of putting his fellow snakes in danger, kid,” Tall Boy says coolly. “You know what happened with your old man and Keller. One of us gets pulled in for something, and they try to pin five other people down.”

“Copy,” Jughead mutters, seeing his point. “Okay, thanks Tall Boy.”

Tall Boy nods, a mixture of dismissal and acknowledgement, and then slides off his barstool. He whistles across the bar, gesturing at the looming figure of Sweet Pea, whom Jughead realizes was lingering nearby, probably eavesdropping. “Peabody,” he calls. “You’re with me. Got a job.”

Jughead hears the muttering of _it’s Sweet Pea_ under his breath as he passes him, throwing over a suspicious look before he stomps after Tall Boy.

He watches them both go, outlined by bright light as they disappear into the world beyond.

Left alone, his eyes sweep over the bar. Under the warm red neon, something familiar calls his name.

**

 _Fred’s still in surgery,_ Betty texts him as he slips outside the Wyrm.

 ** _ok,_ ** he replies. **_just talked to a couple serpents. they’re looking into it. should i come back to the hospital?_**

An ellipsis appears and disappears a couple of times, and then finally: _I don’t know. Veronica took Archie home for a little bit. My mom finally heard what happened and I think she’s about to put me under house arrest until I graduate. A loose gunman was the last bit of ammunition she needed. She just picked me up._

A moment later, she adds, _Fred isn’t supposed to be out of surgery for another couple hours, last I talked to someone. There was a complication, I think._

_**jesus. ok. keep me posted** _

He stares at her words for a long moment, wondering just how long these surgeries normally take, and then slides his phone back into his pocket. He leans against his bike, trying to decide if he should go to the hospital or back to the trailer. The idea of Fred waking up without anyone there physically makes him nauseous, but he’ll be in surgery so long it may not be the most logistical choice to go back yet.

Checking the time on his phone, it’s just past two in the afternoon—in and of itself almost unfathomable, considering how long today has felt—and the social worker is supposed to be at the trailer around five. He never quite finished packing, despite what he implied to Betty, so he decides to head home for a bit, desiring to keep himself occupied.

As he tears around Pickens, it strikes him as strange that he was already back to thinking of the trailer as home.

He wonders how long that’ll stick this time.

**

Just over a couple of hours later, there’s a thunderous knock on the trailer door.

He’s finally packed up now, save for the leather Serpent jacket, which remains laid out next to the bag on the bed, eyes boring up into the ceiling. He hasn’t quite been able to make himself put it back in the closet yet, wondering if it’ll come in handy to just have on him, regardless of his actual status with the gang.

For a brief moment, Jughead thinks the knocking must be Archie or Betty, come to tell him in person that Fred is finally awake and to come back to the hospital. And it’s too early for the social worker to arrive, but decides that maybe she’s just already overcompensating for her shit job.

But as he answers it, he barely has a moment to register the two massive figures shouldering their way through the trailer’s front door, carrying a limp third body between them.

Jughead gapes, open mouthed, as Tall Boy hoists up a bloodied man by the scruff of his neck and Sweet Pea grabs a kitchen chair and carries it over his head, depositing it in the dead center of the living room. The third man is practically shoved into it.

“What—wh—” Jughead’s words fail him on the first try, horror and dread and confusion and _the blood dripping on the carpet_ completely short-circuiting his brain. When he finally finds his voice, it’s raised. “What the hell?”

“You wanted us to get you information,” Tall Boy replies, as if he were announcing the weather. “So we found a little ghost to interrogate. Turns out the dead can still bleed.”

“Tell him what you told us,” Sweet Pea says, flashing a pair of brass knuckles under the man’s chin. Jughead stares, jaw still slack.

The man in the chair spits a bloody thought onto the carpet, and then glares daggers at Jughead through a swollen eye. “Wasn’t us.”

“There you go,” Tall Boy says surreptitiously.

Jughead’s mouth opens and closes twice. “When I said I wanted information, I didn’t want it—want— _this!”_ he yells, throwing a hand vaguely at the crucified scene before him.

Sweet Pea’s face flickers with what may be a glimmer of discomfort underneath the bravado, but they both look to Tall Boy, who simply crosses his arms. “This is both the message and the proof we delivered it,” he says blandly. “Now you know we’re good on our word.”

“But—” Jughead can’t even finish the thought, his head pounding. What the hell kind of people was his dad friends with? Forcing teenagers to beat up strangers and dump them in people’s living rooms? “Get him out of here,” he manages to stammer, pointing vaguely at the door. “Now!”

“If that’s what you want,” Tall Boy says, hoisting the bloodied man back up by the collar and pushing him towards the front of the trailer. “Give your old man my best.”

Sweet Pea hesitates, eyebrows knotted, but then he ducks his head down and follows after him.

They leave the front door open.

Jughead feels sick.

Dimly, from across the trailer, he hears his phone ring again. A sensation of déjà vu washes over him as he stumbles towards his father’s bedroom, head still spinning from what the hell just happened.

Like before, the caller ID is Betty.

And like before, when he answers, he can tell something is wrong right away.

“Jug,” she says, halfway wrapped around a sob. “Fred…”

The poem from all those years ago resurfaces across the pool of his thoughts, and he swallows against the rising dread. _This is how the world ends,_ he remembers dimly. 

His heart hammers loudly against his chest, feeling as though it’s going to force itself right through the skin. _This is how the world ends._

“Fred…what, Betty?” he asks, already afraid to ask, already thinks he knows. He readjusts the grip on the phone, his hands clammy with the answer he doesn’t want.

 _This is how the world ends,_ he thinks. _Not with a bang but a—_

“Fred _died,_ Juggie,” Betty says with a whimper.

He drops his phone.

 

**  
  
**  
  
**

**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listening playlist: [for what it's worth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIoKr9VDg3A) by buffalo springfield (a song that i think really encompasses much of the season/story), [i'm on fire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEFTK1stlGo) by the chromatics, [house of the rising sun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjsGFM-sVbE) by the animals, and [early in the morning](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmY4bfweM3U) by peter, paul, and mary. 
> 
> a bit of shop talk: we've been toiling away at this story for a few months now, and finally feel ready to share it! every two weeks, we're going to be posting on tuesdays, and each chapter trades off between the five of us, in order. (this first chapter was by onceuponamirror) and like the show, we're keeping the ensemble element; all chapters will have a main pov and then two others. 
> 
> so---as you may have been able to tell, we're making some major changes to the season two arc. RIP!!!! it was with a very heavy heart that we decided to kill our beloved fred, but we did so to fundamentally change the entire route of the "season" and felt it was ultimately necessary; the original season had so little follow-through, but by going back to the beginning and making this change, we're telling a familiar but very different story. so---expect nothing to be the same.
> 
> in this opening specifically, i wanted to address jughead's role as an in-betweener, his mixed feelings, address veronica's guilt issues, as well as reset cheryl's whole stage, for reasons that'll become clear as things unfold. from here on out, though, obviously, canon diverges a lot more. 
> 
> we have a _lot_ of twists and turns planned and we've been working really hard for a few months on making sure this is a focused, character-driven mystery that ideally rights some of the wrongs of the original season. 
> 
> so please, please, please, drop us a review and let us know what you think so far! we've been really excited to share this fix it and have a lot in store for you! reviews are the lifeblood. please, please review.


	2. fly away home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for this chapter for parental-death-related grief.

 

 

Archie’s grief is a wild thing, a beast that stirs when the doctor sets a hand on his shoulder _(we did everything we could)_ , that stretches its limbs as he paces the hospital hall in utter disbelief, his brain unable to absorb the new contours of his reality (Veronica a couple steps behind him all the while, the _click-clack_ of her heeled shoes falling out of its usual precise rhythm, her voice curling upward like a question around each murmur of his name), and then the beast roars so Archie roars too, a terrible sound ripping its way out of his throat, his unbroken hand pounding into the hospital wall and blood splitting along his knuckles.

“Archie!” he hears Veronica gasp, just beneath the sound of his heartbeat echoing loud in his ears and the memory that keeps battering through his mind, over and over again: his father’s hand, firm on his arm, pushing him out of harm’s way; his father’s voice, low and sharp all at once and indisputable, saying _no;_ his father bleeding on the floor, looking terrifyingly _small_.

His father.

He slams his fist against the wall again and Veronica’s voice cries, “Archie, _please_ ,” but that doesn’t mean anything. _Please_ means nothing at all; he’s been whispering that word to every higher power he could think of for hours now and the only place it’s gotten him is here.

His father. Dead.

Dr. Masters had set a hand, heavy with sympathy, on his shoulder, and looked into his eyes, and said all the things Archie’s heard before on TV shows and in movies, but what he was saying, what he was _telling_ Archie, didn’t quite sink in until he said, “I’m so sorry, son.”

_Son._

Fist still pounding repeatedly against the wall, Archie shoves an elbow at the nurse who rushes over to try to calm him, hair falling into his eyes as he thinks of that word and how he may never hear it again. He will never again hear _hurry up, son, you’re going to be late for school._ No one will hug him and say _it’s okay, son; I know you were trying to do the right thing._ On his graduation day, his wedding day, the day he signs a recording contract or decides to put on a hard hat and follow in the footsteps of the Andrews men before him, there will be no one there to say, _I’m proud of you, son._ There will only be an empty space, because his father is dead.

His eyes fill in one instant and flood in the next, a whimpering sound slipping out of his mouth like the beast within him has been mortally wounded, and then there are hands on his arms and a voice he recognizes saying, “Jesus, Archie,” and it’s Jughead, Jughead standing between him and the wall, Jughead’s expression pinched and tortured, Jughead gently pinning both of his arms back down by his sides.

Archie’s knees give out and Jughead grabs at his elbows, helps lower him to sit on the floor rather than collapsing on it, and hugs him.

“I’m sorry, Archie,” Jughead says, his voice a little muffled. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

There’s a hand on his back, then, rubbing soothingly, and he sees that Betty has joined them on the floor, her eyes bright and wet, tracks of tears already drawn like uneven lines down her cheeks.

“Arch,” she says softly with a sad little shake of her head, and he stares at her. It’s Betty. Betty, who has known the answer to every single problem his life has ever presented him with, whether it was long division in fourth grade or how he could ever possibly get used to his mom living so far away or if his hair looked stupid long if he didn’t cut it for six weeks. Betty always knows the answer, and yet -

He blinks at her, moisture making his eyelashes seem sticky. In a strange, lost voice that doesn’t seem like it’s coming from inside of him, he says, “You said he’d be okay.”

Betty chokes on a sob, her free hand flying up to clap over her mouth, her expression sinking from sadness into devastation. Jughead lifts one of the arms he has around Archie and puts it around her instead, hauling her into the hug with them, right against his side, as she cries.

In his peripheral vision, misted over with tears, Archie can see Veronica’s ankles shaking in her heels.

 

**

 

Mary arrives at the hospital fifty-six minutes after Archie’s father is pronounced dead, which is enough time for his bloody hand to be cleaned and wrapped in a bandage and for him to be deposited into a chair with a cup of tea he has no intention of drinking set beside him.

“Oh, Archie,” she says as she approaches him, her heart in her voice, tears in her eyes. She looks at him with shaking lips pressed together, taking in the blood smeared on his clothing, most of it his father’s, some of it his own.

“Don’t cry, Mom,” he says automatically, and when he gets to his feet, he intends for his hug to offer her some comfort, but once he’s in her arms it’s just - she’s his _mom_ , and the way she smells is the scent of a thousand soft, warm memories, and this moment is such a stark contrast to all those flitting images of his childhood, his parents smiling at one another across the dining table or at the foot of his bed, that he crumples in her embrace and bursts into tears.

Even with his face pressed into her shoulder, he can hear her crying, too, and it makes him feel so fucking _helpless._ Ever since Pop’s, he’s been feeling like the most useless person in the world. He could do nothing for his father. And he can do nothing for his mom, who spent her day worrying on a plane and then on a train and arrived in the midst of the clusterfuck that is now his life.

“It’ll be okay, baby,” his mother tells him softly, like he’s four years old and he’s only skinned his knee. “You’ll be okay.”

“Mom, he - ” As he pulls back, he realizes that his newly banged and bruised hand is shaking. “He just _shot_ him, he - ”

His mother nods, her face creased with grief, and takes his hand, tenderly, in both of hers. “I’m so sorry you saw that.”

“At least I was there,” he says, swallowing almost viciously against the lump in his throat. “At least I was with him, you know?”

She lifts one hand to his cheek, its surface gritty and sticky under her fingers. “Yes, honey,” she says thickly. “I know.” Her eyes flick away from his face, distracted by movement behind them, and she says, “Oh, Betty, sweetie.” She kisses Archie’s cheek before stepping forward to give Betty a hug, too. “Thank you for being here.”

“Of course,” Betty says. Her voice is weirdly high, like she also feels like a little kid in his mother’s arms.

“And Jughead,” Mary says as she lets Betty go. Jughead offers a short, sad wave in response, the corners of his mouth deeply downturned.

Because she always seems to know just what to do, even in the heavy air of the hospital waiting room - which feels like it’s seeping in through Archie’s ears and turning everything in his mind all foggy - Betty hooks a hand around Veronica’s elbow and pulls her forward. “Mary, you remember Veronica?” she says. “Archie’s girlfriend.”

“Of course,” his mother says, making an attempt at a smile.

Veronica wrings her hands in front of her. “Hi, Mrs. Andrews,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you, Veronica. Me too.”

“Mary,” says Sheriff Keller’s voice then, and they all turn in its direction to see him standing with his hat in his hands and a grimace-like expression on his face, Kevin hovering a few paces behind him. “I’m sorry about Fred.”

“Thank you, Tom,” she says, wrapping an arm around Archie. “Do you have any idea who could have done this?”

“Not yet, I’m afraid, but I’ve got every one of my men working on it.” Sheriff Keller pauses. “I was hoping, actually, to speak with Archie, now that you’re here. If you could recount the scene for us,” he adds, looking at Archie now, “it could really help with the investigation.”

He frowns. “I already told you what happened.”

“And the fresh perspective was very useful,” the sheriff. “But I’d like to go through things in a bit more detail. I know it’s a terrible time, but if you’re up for it…?”

Everyone is looking at him. His mother, his girlfriend, his two oldest friends; the sheriff and Kevin and Reggie and Moose, who have appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and even one of the nurses, her pen paused above a clipboard. Archie doesn’t know what they could possibly be expecting of him, a boy whose only major accomplishments so far this year have been an ill-advised affair with a teacher, a foray into songwriting, and serving as witness when the life seeped slowly out of his father’s body.

(He forgets about Veronica, in that moment. He forgets about the thrill of the previous night, of her body under his hands, of her mouth whispering that she was going to give him everything he’d wanted from the day he first watched her walk into Pop’s.

That used to be what he thought about whenever Pop’s crossed his mind: Veronica, pulling her hood down, walking like she’d just stepped right out of a dream.

Now, he only thinks of the blood, and of an ugly, screeching sound echoing through the otherwise-empty diner, the sound of his own hoarse screams.)

“Honey?” his mother prompts.

He blinks himself back into reality and shakes his head to clear some of the fog. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

His mother gives him one of her lawyer-looks, a slow, measuring kind of thing. “Half an hour,” she tells Sheriff Keller.

He nods. “Done.”

 

**

 

Sheriff Keller leads them into someone’s office. There are posters on the wall: a skeleton with all its bones labelled, a list of vaccination boosters appropriate for every age, some instructions on avoiding the flu. The sheriff sits on one of those rolling stools that doctors so often have, and Archie and his mother sit down in the hard-backed chairs meant for patients.

“One more time, Archie,” Sheriff Keller says encouragingly. He pulls a pen from behind his ear, flips open a small notebook, and looks at Archie like he’s a goddamn walking clue. “From the beginning.”

Archie takes a deep breath, closing his eyes. He feels his mom squeeze his knee. “I went to the washroom,” he says, trying to relive the morning without allowing the memory to overtake him. “I heard something. Shouting. Maybe some stuff falling. So I went back out. And when I did, I saw Pop, behind the counter, and there was a man standing on top of it - ” He swallows.

“Doing great, hon,” Mary murmurs.

“And he - the man - had Pop by the collar, and he was pointing his gun right - right at Pop’s head. And kicking stuff around, off the counters. That was probably what I heard. So I - ” Archie cuts himself off again, gulping this time. He draws in another breath, and, forgetting about his battered knuckles, tries to clench his hand into a fist. He feels a couple of the cuts crack open again. “So I looked at my dad. And he shook his head, like _no, don’t do anything, Archie._ But he was going to shoot Pop, so someone had to do something, so my dad got up - he got up slowly, that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? And he had his hands up, to show he wasn’t dangerous. He was - he was handling it the right way, wasn’t he?”

Archie looks into the sheriff’s eyes and sees sympathy staring back at him, but no answers. “What happened then, Archie?” Sheriff Keller prompts.

“He started walking toward my dad. P-pointing the gun at my dad. Yelling at him. So I…” He sneaks a quick glance over at his mother, suddenly consumed by guilt. “So I moved toward him. Toward Dad. I didn’t mean to, exactly, it was just - it was _instinct_ , that man was pointing a gun at him, so - ” His words stall in his throat, choking him, and he turns his head toward his mom. “I didn’t move slowly, not like Dad did. I was panicking. So I didn’t move slowly, and then - ”

“Archie,” she whispers. “ _Honey._ All you wanted was for your dad to be safe. Nothing that happened afterward was your fault.”

Archie gives his head several fast, minute shakes, his eyes misting over. “I moved fast, and then Dad pushed me away from him, fast, and then - ”

Mary wraps her arms around him, her fingers making an effort at smoothing out his dishevelled hair. “Shh, honey. It doesn’t matter what speed anyone did anything. There were no rules. That man, whoever he is - he’d already broken all the rules by the time you got there.”

In a strangled voice, Archie concludes, looking at the sheriff again: “And then he shot my dad.”

Sheriff Keller nods solemnly. “What did you do then, Archie?”

“I ran to him. My dad. I wanted to - he was bleeding, so I got down on the floor with him, and Pop gave me a towel to try and stop it - ”

“And the man?” the sheriff cuts in gently. “What did he do?”

“I wasn’t...paying that much attention to him. He ran. I saw him run, heard the door chime when he left.”

“Did you see if he was carrying anything? Money from the till?”

“No.” Archie pauses, considers. “No, I don’t think so. But like I said, I wasn’t really looking at him, after… ”

The sheriff flips backward in his notebook. “You said the suspect was...male, and dressed in all black, with a hood over his face. Are there any other details you can remember? Any at all?”

Archie wracks his brain, trying not to focus on the reoccurring image of his father’s prone body. “Not...really,” he says apologetically. “It all happened really fast, and I was worried about my dad.”

“Of course,” the sheriff says, all understanding, but there’s a note of disappointment in his voice that even Archie and his hazy brain can’t miss. “You give the station a call if you remember anything else, alright? Even if it seems insignificant, even if it’s the smallest detail. You let me know.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you, Tom,” Mary says, effectively putting an end to the meeting. Sheriff Keller dips his chin and stands up, collecting his hat from the doctor’s desk and making his way to the door. His hand is on the doorknob when the fog in Archie’s brain abruptly clears, giving way to brilliant, precise technicolour, finally presenting him with a colour other than grey and blood-red.

“Sherriff, wait,” he says, bolting to his feet so fast that it seems to startle his mother. “He was wearing a ring. A big one. I think it was green.”

 

**

**

**

**

 

Sitting at the dining table in the Cooper house, Cheryl nibbles morosely on a slice of honeycrisp apple. When Alice and Hal and Betty rushed out the door, their expressions grim, she wasn’t invited to come along but rather tasked with watching Polly, lest she go into some kind of stress-induced labour. Polly seems fine, however, sitting on the living room couch with a baby name book in her hands, which means that Cheryl has ample time on her hands to consider her own problems.

And her problems are many. The FBI’s investigation into her family has ruined what she thought was a foolproof plan. Her nana was struck by a bout of angina after hearing the news about Thornhill burning to the ground, and is currently in a small hospital upstate, under observation. And as a consequence of her parents being criminals and her grandmother being in delicate health, Cheryl is stuck sleeping on a _pull-out sofa_ in the Coopers’ basement rec room, which was made up for her with perfect hospital corners by Alice Cooper, who eyed Cheryl and her slightly-singed white skirt with no attempt to disguise her suspicions and said, “There are rules in this house, and you’ll be expected to follow them,” like Cheryl had been raised somewhere completely lawless, which - well. Perhaps she had.

She looks at Polly, one hand braced against her swollen stomach, looking at a page full of names but her eyes elsewhere. She thinks of the way Betty had looked when she came through the front door midway through Cheryl’s explanation of her circumstances to Alice and Hal, her ponytail wilted and sloppy and her eyes stretched wide, like she’d been spooked. She imagines Archie in a hospital waiting room, his head heavy in his hands and tremors of grief running across his shoulders.

She remembers her brother, on the banks on the outskirts of Greendale, believing that everything would be alright. Things were so different in this town, in the only place she’s ever called home, mere months ago. She hadn’t wanted to let go of Jason once they’d rowed across the river. Maybe she shouldn’t have.

“Cher.”

She starts when Polly says her name - or rather, half of it. The only one who ever called her that, who was ever allowed to, was Jay-Jay. She knows that’s where Polly picked it up, but she’s not sure if she likes it.

“Yes, Pollykins?” she asks in her brightest voice, a nice smooth don’t-alarm-the-pregnant-teen tone.

“They’re home,” Polly says, pushing herself to her feet with a fair amount of effort. Cheryl stands, too, and follows Polly’s gaze out of the Coopers’ living room windows, where she can see Hal turning the station wagon into the driveway as Fred Andrews’ truck carries on by to the driveway next door. Polly sucks in a breath. “Do you think - ”

“No,” Cheryl says, but yes, she does. She does think, she maybe even knows, that everyone returning home from the hospital all at once is a terrible sign. _Someone_ would’ve stayed at the hospital if they were still waiting for news. She rubs her lips together and is reminded by the discomfort of dry skin that her mouth is currently pink and bare, all her favourite red lipsticks stashed in the woods behind what was once her family home.

“I’m just going to step out,” she says. “You should stay inside, Polly. You wouldn’t want to catch cold.”

Steeling herself, Cheryl marches into the foyer and swings open the red front door. The wind cuts through her floating skirt, her flimsy turtleneck blouse, in an instant, and a shiver trembles through her body. She can’t stop thinking about her brother.

She makes her way down the steps that lead to the house and along the walkway. Betty and Veronica are stepping out from the station wagon’s back doors, one on either side. Betty spots Cheryl, meets her eyes, and gives her head one small, sombre shake. Cheryl’s stomach churns, apple slices and melancholy and bile. She looks past Betty, over at the Andrews’ driveway, and watches Mary and Archie get out of the truck, both of them moving so slowly, like their limbs are in molasses, their hands lingering on the body of the truck like it’s a part of the man it belongs _(belonged)_ to.

Veronica, jaw clenched so tight that it creates new, sharpened angles in her face, says, “I’m going to…” and tilts her head toward the house next door. Betty nods, Alice’s hand already on her shoulder, ready to shepherd her inside.

Cheryl makes a split-second decision and starts to move forward, walking into the driveway and coming to a stop at Veronica’s side. Veronica looks over at her, eyes wary, and perhaps, beneath all the shock and sadness, a little afraid.

“I’ll walk with you,” Cheryl says, as if Veronica’s not headed a mere ten feet to the north. Veronica jerks her chin down in a quick, brisk nod, and they step forward in their heels, stilettos sinking into grass, the ground not yet frozen.

“Hey,” Archie mumbles when they reach him. He’s a _mess_ , sporting a brand new bandage on the hand that was previously uninjured, blood all over his clothes, the circles around his eyes red enough to rival his hair.

“Hi, Archiekins,” Veronica says in a very quiet voice, reaching over and touching his bicep.

“Let’s go in, Archie,” Mary Andrews says, though she’s looking at the house like it’s haunted and she’d much rather run away. “We need to get you cleaned up.”

“Yeah,” he says, and turns to follow his mother, Veronica watching him with her unsure eyes.

“Archie,” Cheryl says, her voice coming out a little too loud. “Wait.” For a moment, everyone goes still: Mary, house keys in hand; Veronica, eyebrows up in a silent question; Archie, staring dully at Cheryl with his shoulders slumped. Veronica moves first, drawing herself up to her full five feet, one inch.

“Mrs. Andrews,” she says. “Can I - should we make some tea?”

Cheryl waits until they’re both on the porch, out of earshot, to tell Archie, “I’m… really sorry about your dad.”

“Thanks,” he mumbles, eyes on the ground.

“And I - I wanted to say thank you, because I don’t think I did before. Thank you for saving me, Archie. For hurting yourself in the process. You - that was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

He lifts his eyes and sort of squints at her for a moment. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever… said to me.”

Cheryl gives him a tiny smile, the quirk of her lips made fleeting by a burst of guilt in her chest. “You’re a good person, Archie,” she says softly. “You really are. I wish I could’ve told your father what you did for me. But even though I didn’t… I’m sure he was proud of you. He’s - he was a really good man.” _Unlike my own father_ , she doesn’t say, but the comparison is obvious enough that Archie probably hears it anyway.

“Thank you, Cheryl,” he says, his voice low, still frowning at her faintly like she can’t be understood.

“No need to thank me,” she says. “It’s just the truth.” She reaches a hand up and lays it on his shoulder briefly. “We’re all thinking of you,” she tells him, and then she heads back for the Cooper house, the grass tickling her feet.

 

**

**

**

**

 

When Jughead rides back into Sunnyside, he spots his social worker, Carolyn, immediately, leaning against her sensible beige sedan, which is parked directly in front of his father’s trailer. The tilt of her head conveys sympathy, but the arms crossed over her chest let him know that his opportunities to delay the inevitable have officially run out.

“Hi there, Jughead,” she says after he pulls off his helmet and shakes out his unruly hair. “It’s terrible news, what happened at Pop’s.”

He dismounts his bike slowly. “Yeah.” There’s a pause, and Carolyn opens her mouth to say something else, but he beats her to it: “You know, I used to be so angry that you wouldn’t let me live with Fred Andrews. And now he’s dead, so it doesn’t even matter.”

“You’re understandably upset,” Carolyn concludes. “Southside High has a guidance counsellor. It might be a good idea to make an appointment with her to make sure you have resources to deal with your grief. I’m sure this has been a shock.”

“Yes,” Jughead agrees, with a bite of sarcasm in his voice. He likes Carolyn well enough – she has a tough job, and from his point of view she seems to be doing it pretty well – but the sterility of her words pisses him off. “It _sure_ has.”

As always, she’s impossible to shake, and she doesn’t react to his tone. “The Topazes are waiting to meet you.”

“Can’t wait,” he says, and tucks his helmet under his arm as he follows her down the gravel road.

The Topazes’ trailer, at least from the outside, is in better shape than his father’s. The majority of the siding is still firmly in place, and the steps leading up the door don’t wobble under Jughead’s feet. It’s bigger, too, which he imagines to be the reason he’ll fit in it.

The door swings open, and Jughead follows Carolyn inside. It’s warm, and smells faintly of burnt toast. They step immediately into a living area, and Jughead’s faced with a large, elderly man whose stoic face gives nothing away, and a teenage girl wearing one flannel shirt over her arms and another tied around her waist.

“Thomas Topaz,” Carolyn introduces them. “And his granddaughter, Antoinette.”

“Toni,” the teenager corrects immediately, but Jughead doesn’t need to be told. He knows who Toni Topaz is. The trailer park is only so big, and she’s hard to miss with her spark of pink hair and her aura about three times the size of her small stature.

“And this is – ” Carolyn waves a hand in Jughead’s direction, but Thomas cuts her off, extending a large, calloused hand for Jughead to shake.

“Jughead,” he says with a nod. “FP’s son.”

Jughead nods, too. Thomas’ handshake is strong, firm. “Nice to meet you.”

“You all have my contact information,” Carolyn says. “Jughead – you give me a call if you need anything. I’ll stop by in a couple weeks.” She shakes Thomas’ hand, too. “We’re lucky to have you,” she tells him with a smile, then gives Jughead a pat on the shoulder that is, remarkably, both comforting and bracing, and ducks out the trailer’s door.

With Carolyn gone, Thomas gives Jughead a long look, one that probes, and Jughead does his best not to shrink under it, to keep his shoulders rolled back rather than letting them slump forward. He can feel Toni’s eyes on him, too, curious and piercing.

“It’s a shame about your old man,” Thomas finally says. “He went down for a lot of things the Sheriff’s been trying to pin on the south side for years.”

“Yeah,” Jughead agrees, shifting his weight from one foot to the other self-consciously. “A shame.”

“Of course, it wasn’t exactly FP’s wisest move to get in bed with Clifford Blossom,” Thomas continues, his eyes narrowed. “But it’s all said and done now.” He sighs, a very long-suffering sigh, like it’s his fiftieth sigh of the day. “Let’s hope Penny has a trick or two up her sleeve.”

Jughead feels his brows knit on his forehead. “Penny?”

“Penny Peabody,” Toni says, snapping her gum. “You know, Sweet Pea’s step-monster? The snake charmer,” she adds, a sarcastic twist to the words.

“The Serpents’ lawyer,” Thomas translates. “She does a decent job, most of the time.”

“And she’s… my dad’s lawyer?”

Toni snorts. “Someone’s been living out his Cinderella story on the north side a little too long.”

Thomas slides her a look, and then turns to Jughead again. “Chicken’s for dinner. You eat chicken?”

Jughead’s heart gives a short-lived but intensely sharp pang. The last person to make him a home-cooked meal was Fred. “I eat chicken,” he confirms. “Eat pretty much anything, really.”

Thomas nods his approval. “Think you’ll fit in here just fine,” he says. “Toni, show Jughead his room.”

“Yes, sir,” she says, and he shoots her another look, one that contains more fondness than exasperation. “This way,” she tells Jughead, and leads him down a narrow hallway.

She swings open a door and gestures for him to go in first. He does, and from behind him, she says, “It’s not much, but it’s somewhere to sleep.”

Jughead takes it in: twin bed, small desk with a chair that looks like it once belonged to a kitchen set, a tiny closet that’s open to reveal an equally tiny dresser within. “Looks great,” he says.

Toni leans against the doorframe, crossing her arms. She doesn’t look like she believes him. “So you’ll officially be gracing the hallowed halls of Southside High with your presence from now on, huh?”

“That’s the plan,” he says, perching against the desk.

“Won’t you miss all your football player friends?”

He opts not to take the bait, instead telling her, simply, “It’s not exactly my choice.”

Her lips twist downward in one corner. “Sucks,” she offers, “what happened with your dad. But my granddad was right - Penny Peabody’s a sneaky bitch, and I mean that as a compliment.”

“Do you think I could meet with her?”

Toni shrugs. “I don’t see why not. Oh - one last thing.” She crosses the room, coming to stand next to the desk, and reaches up onto the sill of the minuscule window. As she leans up, stretching her hand high, her flannel shirt and the white tank top beneath it ride up. Curling over her hipbone, Jughead spots the green tail of a snake.

She sets her heels back on the floor and hands him a tiny key. “For the bars,” she says, nodding to the window. “In case you need to make an escape.”

“Thanks,” he says distractedly, his eyes flicking to her hip again, which is now covered by black-and-red flannel. He thinks he’d known Toni was a Serpent, but he definitely hadn’t realized she was deep enough in the gang to be an official member, tattoo and all. He wonders if she knows about the blood Sweet Pea and Tall Boy spilled on his father’s living room carpet.

Toni snaps fingers in front of his face. “Don’t look at me like that, Jones,” she says, her features organized into a faux-scandalized expression, eyes wide and mouth agape. “You’re practically my brother now.”

Jughead frowns. “I wasn’t - ”

A smile cracks on Toni’s face, and peals of her laughter sound down the hall as she leaves his room.

 

**

**

**

**

 

Archie sits with his mother and Veronica at the kitchen island for what feels like a very, very long time, but is actually only about twenty-five minutes judging by the stovetop clock. He took a shower while they made tea, and now he sits in clean clothes that smell like laundry detergent, a cup of earl grey in front of him. Archie knows virtually nothing about tea, but he’s pretty sure that the tea bags stored in the back of the cupboard were pretty old, and the lukewarm water in his cup tastes sort of like a swamp. He pushed it away after a single sip, remembering the plans he’d had only that morning, to order hash browns and bacon and a cup of coffee with two milks, two sugars.

Every once in a while, his mother reaches over and gives his hand a comforting squeeze, as if he needs reminding that she’s there. Her gaze keeps flitting over to the fridge and to the pictures stuck haphazardly to it with magnets: Archie at various stages in his life, Archie with his father during the past summer, all three of them on Christmas morning four years ago. Part of him wants to know what she’s thinking, and part of him is sure he couldn’t possibly handle that knowledge, on top of everything else.

Veronica fidgets a little on her stool. There is a small smudge of mascara on her right cheek. “You should eat something,” she says. “Both of you. I’m sure you’re not hungry, but - you really should eat, right? Something small, even. Maybe some soup? Or we could order something? I could - ”

“Thank you, Veronica,” Mary interjects, “but I couldn’t stomach anything right now. It’s been… a very long day. I think I need to lie down for a few minutes.” She gets up and goes over to the counter, where she’d left her purse, and withdraws her wallet from it. She sets two twenty dollar bills down by Archie’s elbow. “You kids go ahead and order whatever you’d like.” She tilts her head, looking right into Archie’s face. “Alright?”

He knows, from her expression, that she doesn’t just mean _are you alright with this food plan?_ but _are you alright?_ , period.

“Yeah.” He forces himself to shift his mouth into a smile. “Thanks, Mom.”

She nods, slides Veronica a take-care-of-him kind of look that he probably wasn’t supposed to see, and then makes her way slowly upstairs to lie down in the room she once shared with his father. Vegas, who’s sitting under Archie’s stool with his down-turned ears disclosing his anxiety, lifts his head and watches her leave the kitchen. “Go on, boy,” Archie murmurs to him, figuring his mom could use the company, and Vegas slinks off in Mary’s wake.

It’s only after the floorboards have stopped creaking under his mother’s feet that Veronica leans in close to him and asks, “What can I do, Archie?”

“I don’t know,” he tells her honestly. “I don’t… think there’s anything.”

“I want to help you,” she says, so quietly he barely hears her.

“I know.” Archie pushes past all the horror-filled memories of the morning and the afternoon and the evening and dredges up pieces of the previous night instead: Veronica’s fingertips moving slow over his chest, like every muscle was something she wanted to memorize; the mole he’d discovered on her upper inner thigh, an imperfection he was almost startled to find.

“Do you want to order some food?”

He shakes his head.

“Okay.” Veronica looks helplessly at the money on the counter for a moment, and then slides off her stool. “Let’s go sit on the couch.”

Relocating to the living room turns out to be a good choice. The soft cushions of the couch are a welcome change after a day of tense muscles on hard chairs. Archie sinks back into them. He sat on this couch with Veronica once before and told her that he felt like he’d messed everything up. He hadn’t known, then, just what a mess things would turn into.

“Do you want to watch something?” Veronica asks after she’s slipped off her heels and tucked her feet up underneath herself. “Or do you want to take a nap?”

“No, I’m not… I couldn’t sleep. Or pay attention to anything.”

“Okay.” Her teeth dig into her bottom lip, turning it white for an instant. “I just wish… I wish I could… ” She touches both of his hands, one plastered and one bandaged, gingerly. “I wish there was something I could do to make it hurt less.” She looks up at him, and his eyes widen when he sees that hers are damp. “But I guess there’s not, right? Or maybe there is and I just - I don’t know it.”

“Veronica, don’t… cry,” he says, with a certain degree of alarm. It sounds stupid once he says it - after all, he’s been crying on and off all day - but she makes a face like she thinks it’s sweet.

“You don’t deserve this,” she whispers, hand on his cheek. “You deserve… better than this.”

“Ronnie,” he says with a small frown, covering her hand with his own. Before he has a chance to say anything else, her mouth is on his, tongue slipping past his lips. Instinctively, his hands reach for her hips, and a moment later she’s in his lap, the skirt of her dress riding upward.

Veronica leaves kisses against his neck, kisses that involve a little suction of her mouth and a hint or two of teeth, and it’s awesome, because the sensation is so overwhelming, paired with her hips rolling against his, that Archie gets lost in it.

She smoothes both hands down over his chest and finds his belt buckle with nimble fingers. Her fingers move from there to the button and zipper of his jeans, and she whispers, “Don’t think about anything,” into his collarbone before she drops to her knees in front of the couch.

They’re in his living room, and the front window curtains are open, and his mother is just upstairs, but Archie doesn’t _care_ , because when she puts her mouth on him, and her hands on him, it feels good. She feels good. And he’d begun to think that _good_ was a feeling he’d lost forever.

After, she runs her tongue along her lips and rejoins him on the couch, tucking herself against his side as he catches his breath. She rests her head against his shoulder and instead of saying _thank you_ , he presses a kiss into her hair.

The house is silent and still, the only sound the quiet ticking of a clock. It’s like the house is waiting for his father to return. All of Archie’s thoughts, and all his misery, creep back in slowly - but at least for a moment he had a reprieve.

“Ronnie,” he says, his mind venturing through the last few minutes, for the hours that spanned last night. “I think I love you.”

Veronica is as still and silent as the house, her breathing even. When Archie tilts his head to look into her face, he discovers that her eyes are closed.

 

**

**

**

**

 

After a miserable dinner (spaghetti prepared by Polly, perhaps a bit _too_ al dente) with her parents, her sister, and Cheryl Blossom, who apparently _lives_ with them now, Betty takes a shower, running the water hot enough to scald her skin and fill the bathroom with steam. The antiseptic smell of the hospital lingers in her nostrils, remaining there even after the lilac scent of her bodywash begins to fade away.

In her bedroom, she slips into pyjama shorts and a t-shirt and then stares at her closed curtains. Now that she’s dressed, she wonders if she should open them. What if Archie wants to see a friendly face, a reminder that not absolutely everything about their lives has changed? But she wonders as well if she should just leave them shut – what if he wants privacy, and space to himself, especially after his public breakdown at the hospital?

(And what if, she can’t help but wonder, she’s the last person he wants to look at? She’d told him that everything was going to be okay, that Fred was going to be okay, because she’d wanted to bolster him, but also because she’d believed it. She was terrified by the possibility of his death, but she’d thought that was all it would ever be: a possibility.)

She leaves her curtains closed.

Hair damp around her shoulders, the ends leaving splotches of cool wetness against her shirt, she sits in the very centre of her bed and draws her knees up to her chest. There are goosebumps on her calves and she runs her fingers along them like they’re a curiosity rather than a part of her body, a signal that she’s cold. Betty is tired, tired right down to her bones, but she doesn’t know if she’ll ever sleep again. Her eyes are achy, so she squeezes them shut, but no tears show up.

There’s a faint sound at her window, a rhythmic drumming, like knuckles on glass. It takes her a second to register the sound, but once she does, she scrambles off her bed and rushes over to throw her curtains open.

On the other side of the windowpane is Jughead, the bottoms of his ears red where they’re uncovered by his beanie, and his tongue flicking in his mouth, a soundless _hi_.

“Hi,” Betty whispers back, and pulls her window upward so he can crawl inside.

It’s about as graceless at it was the first time, his attempt to maneuverer his body through the window frame, but this time once his feet hit her floor there’s no hesitation, no space between them – she throws herself right into his arms, pressing her face into his neck. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she murmurs.

He sighs into her hair, and it sends a soft little shiver through her body. “Me too.”

She holds him for a long time, enjoying the feeling of his hands, fingers splayed wide, against her back. It takes her a little longer to realize what’s under her own hands: soft, worn-in corduroy, the familiar material of one of his sherpa jackets.

Her hands slip down along his biceps. “Jug,” she says quietly. The relief she feels is immeasurable. It pulses from her fingertips through the rest of her body.

“It’s cold out there,” he says, taking a small step backward to shrug it off, as though she’s commenting on the suitability of his outerwear for the evening’s forecast. She’s not, and he knows it, and she can’t help her small frown, the _don’t-play-dumb_ eyes she gives him. 

“Betts,” Jughead says, gathering both her hands in his, pulling them to his chest.

She can tell that he doesn’t want to have the conversation, but – “I like that jacket,” she says simply. “But we haven’t – we should talk about the other one. Especially now; you said your foster father’s granddaughter is a Serpent, so if you don’t wear it will she… rat you out? Is that a thing? It must be, right? So we should – ”

Suddenly, the heat of his mouth is close enough that she can feel it on her own lips. “If you want,” he says, linking her hands up around his neck, “but there’re other things we could talk about.” His hands trail down her sides, finding her hips.

Betty gives him a chiding look, but she can’t help leaning in, leaning up, pressing into the balls of her feet. “Or _not_ talk about, you mean,” she corrects him pointedly, nearly teasing.

“Or not,” he agrees, his eyes half-closed, but because he’s Jughead (and she _loves_ him, loves everything about him, loves both his hesitance and his confidence), he does talk about it, a little: “Betty, last night… ”

“I – I think I wanted more,” she tells him, her cheeks flushing. “I think I wanted… everything.”

He cups her jaw in his palm, lifting her face like he’s going to kiss her, but he doesn’t. “You think?” he asks instead.

Her eyes flicker over his face (she _loves_ his face). This might be her first relationship, but she knows how important communication is. She knows that the lines need to stay open. She knows that the conversation they had in the diner wasn’t quite adequate, that the topic of The Jacket has not yet quite been resolved ( _it’s a symbol, Betty_ is the beginning of an explanation, not the end of one), but he’s a force of heat and calm and comfort and normalcy, right here in her room, and she doesn’t want to reopen that particular can of worms – or snakes, as the case may be.

“Yeah, I think,” she says breathily. “Why don’t you… find out for sure?”

One of his hands slides up her back, under her shirt, smoothing along her spine, and he pulls her right against him, chest to chest, before he kisses her. Betty’s cold skin feels like it’s been ignited.

Jughead walks her back against the edge of her bed, and she sits, and shuffles backward, so that her head is close to the pillows, and he stretches out over top of her, nudging her bare legs apart with his knees.

“Tell me if you want to stop, okay?” he murmurs into her neck.

“Don’t.” She tugs at his shirt, granting herself access to his skin. “Don’t stop.” She sighs as his lips start tracing a path along the v-neck of her shirt, and it’s when he begins to tug at the neckline that her nervy, desperate desire for him is interrupted by the bright flash of a proverbial lightbulb. She sits up, so fast that his nose bumps, hard, against her sternum.

“I’m sorry,” she says quickly, reaching for his face. “I just – in the rush of everything tonight I completely forgot; what did you find out from the Serpents?”

His expression closes off. The complete shutdown is only momentary; his eyes open up to her again soon enough. But that moment is enough to rocket her back to the night before, Jughead on one side of a door, her on the other, an unexpected divide made by a sliver of moonlight. She wants to pull him back to her. She wants to shimmy out from underneath him, march to the other side of town, and relegate that jacket to the very back of his closet, pulling all the flannel and denim she’s always known him in to the front.

“They didn’t do it,” Jughead says. “I know that for sure.”

“How?” she asks, without allowing herself enough time to decide if this is an issue worth pressing. “How do you know that, what did they – ”

“Betts.” He kisses her, slow and building, and when she’s about to ask _what?_ , presses his hips into hers. He’s hard, and it draws a gasp out of her throat. He drops his forehead to hers. “Do you want to stop?”

“No,” she says quietly, tilting her chin up to nudge a kiss against his mouth. She swallows down her questions. “I love you.”

His face opens up completely, and he’s all hers again. “I love you, too.”

She smiles, and when he kisses her smile she hooks a leg up around his hips, and he groans into her mouth in a way that makes her heart flutter, and –

There are two sharp, crisp taps on her door. Jughead has just enough time to mutter, “ _Shit_ ,” and throw himself down to the floor on the far side of her bed. Betty adjusts her shirt and fixes her gaze on the ceiling as the door swings open.

“Oh, honey,” her mother says, tray in hand. “Are you tired? You should sleep.”

“I can’t,” Betty says quietly. It isn’t a lie.

Alice crosses the room and perches on the edge of Betty’s bed. “I brewed you some High Point. A warm drink should help.”

Betty pushes herself up into a sitting position, rubbing self-consciously at her neck, hoping there aren’t any mouth-shaped marks there. “Thanks, Mom.”

Alice lifts the mug from the tray and presses it into Betty’s hands. “I’ve got a casserole in the oven. Perhaps you can bring it over to Archie and Mary in the morning.”

“Sure,” Betty says. “Yeah. I’ll do that.”

Her mother nods her approval and stands again, but she doesn’t head back toward the door. Instead, she remains by the bed, hovering above Betty, the hardness her eyes so often carry conspicuously absent.

“I love you, Elizabeth,” she says after a long moment of silence.

Betty’s chin gives an abrupt quiver. “I love you, too, Mom,” she says softly. “Goodnight.”

Alice leans down and kisses the top of Betty’s head before she goes. She leaves the door open just a crack behind her.

After her mother’s footsteps have faded down the hall, Betty hastily puts her mug on her bedside table and peers down over the edge of her bed. Jughead, laying on his back on the floor, looks back at her, glimmers of panic still present in his expression. In another life - the life she was leading yesterday - this might have been hilarious.

As it stands, Betty just sighs. “I guess you’d better go.”

 

**

 

In the morning, Betty plods down the stairs in response to her mother’s call and finds Veronica standing in the foyer. “I brought croissants,” she says, holding up a paper bag with the expression of someone who has no interest in actually eating a croissant.

“Come on upstairs,” Betty says, pointedly not commenting on the fact that Veronica is wearing jeans - dark wash jeans that are undoubtedly expensive, but jeans nonetheless.

“Hi, V,” Cheryl says from the living room, where she’s sitting in a pair of Polly’s pyjamas, the pants of which puddle a little around her ankles, watching a breakfast newscast.

Veronica glances toward the living room briefly before her head whips to the side again, a double-take. “Cheryl,” she says. “Hello.” She turns inquisitve eyes toward Betty, who tilts her head toward the upper floor of the house.

As she closes her bedroom door behind them, she says, “Yeah. Cheryl lives here now. Her house burnt down.”

Veronica’s jaw drops. “What?”

Betty nods solemnly, taking a seat on her bed, still unmade. “Her mom got burned pretty badly, it sounds like. And it turns out that the FBI is investigating her family, so all of the Blossoms’ assets have been seized. And since Cheryl is… sort of my cousin in a weird way…” She trails off with a shrug.

“Oh my god,” Veronica breathes, sort of collapsing onto the foot of the bed. “What is _happening_ in this town?”

Betty shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she says softly. She feels particularly in the dark, given that she still doesn’t have the exact details of what Jughead learned from the Serpents.

After a few seconds of looking defeated, as though she’s been battling the strange town she moved to for months and it’s currently winning the war, Veronica seems to pull herself together and asks, “How… is she?” in a delicate way that makes it clear she’s referring to what happened at Sweetwater River.

“I’m not sure, exactly,” Betty admits. “Yesterday was… well, you know. But she’s here, and Polly’s here, so I think that’s good - they’re spending time together, and I think the babies are a good distraction. But I haven’t exactly broached the subject.” She presses her lips together for a beat. “How’s Archie?”

“Not so good,” Veronica sighs. “I left around nine-thirty last night, and we spent almost all the time before that just… sitting. And his face is so…” She looks down into her lap. “I don’t know what to _do_ , B. He just sits there, so I just sit there, and I feel like there must be _something_ to say, but whatever it is, I never learned it.”

“There’s no magic key, V,” Betty says gently. “You just…you be there. With him. And that sounds like what you’re doing.”

“He needs more than that. He needs more than me just _sitting_ there. It’s like he keeps going back to the diner, and he’s reliving what happened over and over again. And I’m not there, in the diner with him. I’m on his couch, sitting there, saying absolutely nothing, because I don’t know what to say. And then he - ”

Veronica stops speaking so abruptly that Betty’s eyebrows arch upward. “Then he what?”

Blowing out her breath, Veronica says, “Nothing. Nothing. I don’t know.”

Betty eyes her for a moment. Veronica seems better than she did at the hospital, but still thoroughly out of her element, and perhaps even disappointed in herself. Veronica is always brimming with confidence, overflowing with it, even - it hadn’t occurred to Betty, before yesterday, that that wasn’t necessarily a conscious choice, but the only way Veronica knew how to be: steeled against vulnerabilities, turning sharp in the face of softness.

“V,” she begins tentatively, but Veronica lifts her head and shakes it.

“I need a distraction,” she declares. “Tell me - ” Her lips flick up into the ghost of her usual sly smile. “Tell me how the rest of your night went, after… after the diner. I saw you heading south.”

Betty nods slowly. “We went back to Jughead’s place,” she says. “And…”

“And?” Veronica prompts, and then her eyes flash, “Oh my god, do you mean and as in… _and_?”

“It was heading in that direction,” Betty admits, shifting around a little, pulling a pillow into her lap.

“But it didn’t...quite get there?”

“We were interrupted. By a - by a neighbour stopping by,” she says, not quite willing to divulge any information about The Jacket before she figures things out by herself. “And it kind of...killed the mood, I guess.”

“But there was a mood?” Veronica checks.

“Yeah,” Betty says, and feels her cheeks pinken. “There was _definitely_ a mood.”

Veronica smiles again, and this time it looks more genuine. “That’s exciting,” she says, and teases, “I was wondering when you two might move past handholding.”

Betty whacks her gently with the pillow. “I am… excited about it,” she says. “It’s something I want. But I’m kind of nervous, too. It’s a big step.”

“It feels that way,” Veronica agrees. “But virginity’s just a construct, B, you know?”

“I know. But it means something, too. It’s new and it’s - we said we loved each other last night.”

Veronica keeps smiling at her, lashes fluttering in rapid blinks. “That’s… amazing, Betty.”

It’s Betty’s turn to smile, so widely that it feels almost inappropriate, under the circumstances. “It was. It is. I’ve known Jughead for almost my whole life, and now… I’m in love with him.” She gives her head a little shake; some part of it still feels surreal. “I feel ready, with him. I feel like he’s...the right person, and it’s the right time. And I can look at him and it’s like I know he feels the same way.”

At some point, Veronica’s eyes dropped to Betty’s bedspread, and they stay there for a few beats before she looks up again. Her smile has vanished completely, but she sounds earnest when she says, “I’m really happy for you, Betty. I’m glad… that something good is going on.”

“Yeah,” Betty agrees quietly, though she’s not entirely sure that everything that happened last night at FP’s trailer was good. She bites the inside of her bottom lip. “Should we eat those?” she proposes lightly, gesturing to the bag of baked goods that Veronica’s still holding, its paper crumpled beneath her fingers.

Veronica tilts her head as if to say _I guess_ , but just as she’s opening the bag, her phone chimes in her pocket. She pulls it out, and as she’s doing so, Betty’s phone beeps on her nightstand.

She leans over to grab it, and Veronica asks, “Archie?” Betty reads the text quickly - _can u come over?_ \- and nods. “Yeah. Just let me get dressed, and we’ll head over.”

She moves to get up off her bed, but changes her mind at the last second and shuffles forward instead, stretching her arms out and wrapping Veronica up in a hug. Veronica squeezes back tightly, a bag of artisanal croissants that will never be eaten abandoned between their bodies.

 

**

**

**

**

 

Shankshaw Prison is an ugly, squat grey building, positioned on the outskirts of Centreville in the middle of a field of dying grass. Jughead stands in the parking lot by his bike for a full ten minutes after he arrives, procrastinating the inevitable. He’s seen his father in plenty of less-than-ideal situations, most of them involving too many bottles of beer and mumblings about his mother, but this - this is not the kind of thing he’s built up immunity to where his dad is concerned. This is prison.

He doesn’t move until a car comes rolling into the parking lot, at which point he heads for the prison doors, not wanting to have to exchange empathetic glances with the car’s driver. He’s not ready to be part of the my-family-member-is-imprisoned club.

Inside, he hands over his cell phone and keys, and follows a slow-moving guard to a room divided in half by transparent plastic, chairs on either side to facilitate visiting. Shankshaw’s walls are scuffed, the paint peeling, and a musty scent seems to follow him around. _Fuck, Dad,_ he thinks miserably, not for the first time.

When his father materializes on the other side of the divider, he’s wearing a crooked smile that’s far too casual to be genuine. He drops into the chair on his side of the grimy, fingerprint-streaked plastic and reaches for the old telephone receiver. Jughead mirrors his actions, bringing the phone on his side to his own ear.

“Hey, Jug,” FP says. The scruff on his cheeks makes Jughead unspeakably sad. He can remember squirming away from that scruff as a little kid, back in the days when he and his father hugged more regularly. “It’s good to see you, kid.”

“You too,” Jughead says. “Are you… doing okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Doing fine. Don’t worry about me, Jughead. I won’t be in here forever.”

He nods. “I hear you’ve got a lawyer.”

“Yeah,” FP says, his eyes intent on Jughead’s face. “You look tired. Who’ve they got you staying with?”

“The Topazes.”

FP nods, and there’s no mistaking the relief that flashes through his eyes. “Thomas is a good man.”

“Yeah,” Jughead sighs. _Speaking of good men,_ he thinks. “Dad… I have to tell you something.”

“Sounds like bad news,” FP says, all of his features slanting downward as he frowns.

“It is.” Jughead finds himself twisting the cord attached to the phone around his hand, creating enough tension that it stings oh-so-slightly. “Yesterday… a gunman went into Pop’s.” His father’s frown slackens with shock. “He shot Fred.” Jughead draws in a breath. “He… didn’t survive, Dad.”

FP stares at him. From Jughead’s vantage point, there is a smudge on the plastic barrier that blurs his father’s left eye. “You’re telling me Fred Andrews was gunned down in Pop’s?”

Jughead nods.

“Fucking Christ,” FP says very quietly. He’s not looking at Jughead now, or at anything, really; his gaze is turned inward, lost somewhere else.

Jughead swallows thickly, staring uneasily at his father for several moments. “Dad?” he finally prompts. His voice almost squeaks.

FP’s eyes focus on him again. “Who did it?” he asks, his voice low and angry.

“Nobody knows yet.”

FP slams a fist down on the tabletop on his side of the divider. Jughead’s body gives a surprised little jerk, and the guard by the door straightens up with a frown.

“Keller is useless,” his father fumes. “What a moron.”

“Betty and I are looking into it too,” Jughead offers. “It seemed like - I don’t know, maybe a robbery gone wrong? It was pretty early in the morning; only Fred and Archie were there. Maybe the guy expected the diner to be empty.”

“Archie was there?” FP asks. His blurred eye is shiny now. “Shit. Poor kid.”

“He’s not doing… great,” Jughead agrees. He unwinds the phone’s cord from around his palm; it leaves a red pressure mark on his skin. “Dad, we - I was wondering, if it _was_ a robbery… could it have been someone you might know? Someone strapped for cash?”

FP rubs at his jaw. “You asking me if a Serpent did this?”

Jughead gives a small shrug. “It’s possible, right?”

“No,” his father barks. “No, it’s not possible. Snakes don’t just kill mice without reason.”

Jughead scowls faintly at the convoluted metaphor, but he can’t help but go along with it, at least just to say: “Fred wasn’t a mouse.”

FP leans back in his chair, the fight seeming to drain out of him. “No,” he says. “He sure wasn’t.”

Briefly, Jughead considers telling his father about Tall Boy and Sweet Pea and the bleeding Ghoulie they’d brought to him. But across from him, his father looks so tired, and suddenly so _old_ , in a way that jars him. One of FP’s oldest friends is dead, he’s in jail, and he’s probably dealing with some level of withdrawal. Jughead can handle Tall Boy on his own; and even if he couldn’t, what, exactly, is his father going to do from behind bars?

As if he’s picked up on what Jughead’s thinking, FP asks quietly, “You gonna be okay, kid?”

“Yeah,” Jughead promises, feeling as though he should probably be crossing his fingers behind his back. “Yeah, Dad. I’ll be fine.”

He follows a guard back to the main entrance of the prison, his hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets. When he gets his cell phone back, he has one text message waiting, from Archie: _can u come over?_

He revs the engine on his bike and takes the highway back toward Riverdale.

 

**

**

**

**

 

Archie is sitting listlessly in his kitchen once again when Betty and Veronica arrive, an untouched slice of toast slathered with peanut butter sitting on a plate in front of him. His mother is on the other side of the island, her cell phone at her side, scribbling notes in her planner about flowers and caskets. She is all business this morning, his mother. He can tell that she’s not letting herself look at the fridge and all its photographic reminders of the family they once were.

“Morning,” Betty calls softly when she and Veronica let themselves in. She has a dish covered with foil in her hands; Vegas promptly trots over to her to investigate. “Hey, buddy,” she says to him.

“Hello, girls,” Mary says.

“Hi, Mrs. Andrews,” Veronica says, and as soon as he looks at her, Archie finds that he can’t stop. She’s wearing _jeans_. He’s never seen Veronica in jeans. Her legs look amazing, and she looks - she looks like she _belongs._ Like she belongs in his town, in his house, with him.

“Could we make you some coffee?” Veronica asks his mom. “Or go get you - oof.” Her sentence ends when Archie walks over to wrap his arms around her, ducking his head down against her hair. She hugs him back, and her voice is tender and soft when she says, “Hey, Archiekins.”

“My mom made a casserole,” he hears Betty say.

“That was very kind of her - thank Alice for me, alright, honey?” his mother responds, and then her phone rings. “Oh, it’s the reverend, I have to take this. Could you pop that in the fridge?”

“Sure,” Betty replies, and Archie closes his eyes, breathing in the almond scent of Veronica’s hair, its strands tickling his nose.

“Archie?” she asks from within his embrace, her voice muffled. He pulls back so that he can see her wide, inquisitive eyes; she’s so _pretty_ it hurts. _I don’t want to leave you_ , he thinks. Out loud, he says, “I’m happy to see you.”

Veronica smiles at him. “Do you want coffee?”

Archie shakes his head. “No, thanks.”

“Jughead’s on his way,” Betty says from the other side of the kitchen, where she’s procuring a treat for Vegas, whose tail is thumping on the floor in anticipation. “He was in Centreville to see his dad.”

“Right,” Archie says on a long, slow sigh.

Betty rests her elbows on the countertop, glancing at all his mother’s notes. “Is there anything we can do for you, Arch? Or maybe something we can help your mom with? Anything at all.”

“Mom kind of seems to be on a mission today, but… I’ll let her know you offered.”

“Okay,” Betty says, giving him a small smile. Her eyes skim over the rest of the kitchen. “Should I do the dishes?”

“No, Betty,” he says on a huff of air, smiling faintly, too. “I want to talk to you guys. We can… go up to my room, I guess? And wait for Jug.”

“Sure,” Veronica says, reaching for his hand and giving it a squeeze.

In his bedroom, Betty folds herself into his desk chair and Veronica sits next to him on the bed, her knee pressed against his thigh. It’s funny, in the saddest way, to look at them both there. Betty’s been in his room more times than he could possibly count, in her Disney princess nightgowns as a little girl, chewing on the end of a pencil as a pre-teen, patiently watching him and Jughead play video games just last year. Veronica, on the other hand, has been in his room a handful of times, but each one is seared into his memory: her mussed-up hair, the tiny smiles tucked into her mouth, her bare legs on his bedspread a magnet for his eyes.

He’ll miss this room, and both of them in it.

“It looks like your mom picked a date?” Betty asks softly. “For the funeral?”

“Yeah.” Archie reaches out, on instinct, and puts his hand on Veronica’s knee, like he needs a reminder that she’s right there. “Monday.”

“We’ll celebrate him,” she says. “All the wonderful things he was.”

“Yeah,” Archie says through a tight throat. He rests his elbows on his knees and leans down, pressing his face into his hands, fighting against the sting of tears. “I can’t believe he’s gone,” he murmurs, and he feels Veronica’s hand settle gently against the middle of his back.

That’s how Jughead finds them several minutes later, all of them lost in their own thoughts, Archie wiping away streaks of moisture from his cheeks every now and again, as surreptitiously as he can. Even though all Jughead says when he walks in the room, bringing a hint of the outside chill with him, is “Hey,” his voice seems to grow softer over the course of the word.

When Archie lifts his head, Jughead is looking at Betty and she’s looking back at him; they’re having one of those seemingly telepathic conversations Archie’s given up on trying to understand. Jughead eventually turns to look at him and says, “Is there anything we can do, Archie? Anything you need?”

He shakes his head as Jughead walks over to stand next to Betty, leaning against Archie’s desk, which is littered with things he thought were important just days ago: homework assignments, half-written lyrics, protein bar wrappers that he needed to pick up before he got a lecture about ants.

“I have something to tell you guys,” he says.

Suddenly, three pairs of curious-but-concerned eyes are fastened on him, and he gulps. He avoids looking into any of their faces as he says, “I’m moving to Chicago.” There’s a quiet gasp that seems to come both from Veronica at his left and Betty across the room. “My mom - she has a really good job there, and she’s got cases on the go. She says she lives in a good school district. She’s… she’s my only parent now; I kind of have to go. And besides, I’m - I’m thinking maybe it’s a good idea that I get out of here. I can’t go back to Pop’s. I can’t go skating on the river when it fully freezes over. Everywhere I go, it sounds like a gunshot.”

The silence in his room is very, very heavy. He looks up from the feet of his desk chair, which he’d been staring at while he delivered his short speech, and sees that Betty’s eyes are swimming with tears. “We’ll miss you so much,” she whispers.

Jughead slips an arm around her and gives her shoulder a comforting squeeze. “Yeah, we’ll - you’re my brother, Archie. Nothing will be the same without you here. But I… get why you have to go.”

Archie nods. “The other thing,” he says, “the other thing is that my mom’s condo has a no-pets rule, so Vegas can’t - ” His voice cracks straight down the middle. “So Vegas can’t come, and - ”

Suddenly, Jughead is right in front of him, hands on Archie’s shoulders, his expression serious. “I’ll take care of him,” he swears, like a smaller version of himself cutting open his palm in the backyard treehouse for an oath that would turn them into blood brothers. “Arch, he’ll come live with me, and I’ll take care of him. I promise you.”

“Are you sure, Jug? What about your foster fa - ”

Jughead shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter,” he says, leaving no room for argument. “I’ve got Vegas.”

“Thanks,” Archie says, the word gritty with unshed tears.

“Of course, man,” Jughead murmurs, and then he hugs him, thumping a fist against his back once and then just holding onto him for what seems like a long time and also like not nearly time enough.

When Jughead retreats back to Betty, who’s crying silently in her chair, Archie forces himself to look at Veronica. She’s still sitting next to him, her denim-clad leg still pressing against his, but her hands are in her lap now, palms up like she’s waiting for something. Her expression is the picture of neutrality, but he thinks if he listened hard enough he’d hear the buzz of the wheels in her head, always turning.

He covers one of her hands with his own. “We can - I’ll visit,” he says. “I’ll visit as much as I can. And we can make it work. Right?”

Veronica smiles at him, but it stops right at her mouth; there’s no movement in her cheeks, and it definitely doesn’t reach her eyes. “Of course, Archie,” she says in the quietest voice.

Betty slips out of her chair then, gives Jughead’s shirt a little tug, and crosses the room to slip one arm around Archie and the other around Veronica, hugging them both at the same time. Jughead follows her lead, and it turns out that his arms are long enough to fit around them all.

In the tangle of limbs, Archie can hear someone’s heart beating, its rhythm just a touch too fast.

**

Monday is overcast, the wind fierce enough to stab sharply through fall jackets. Archie shivers through his father’s funeral, his mother’s arm hooked through his own.

Later, he’ll remember the day in snapshots, moments frozen in time. He’ll remember the little veil that hung off Cheryl’s black hat, in front of her eyes. He’ll remember how Veronica’s heels kept getting stuck in the mud.

He’ll remember the birds that flew overhead, calling to each other with a certain amount of urgency. He’ll remember _ashes to ashes, dust to dust._

He’ll remember seeing Pop, a man who had always seemed so unshakeable to him, sobbing into a handkerchief. He’ll remember how the crumpled piece of paper, pen strokes a record of Jughead’s eulogy, floated away in the wind.

Archie will remember how when a hand grabbed onto his, he knew it was Betty’s without having to look, and how he held on for dear life. He’ll remember Josie’s voice, softened with respect, singing out the song he and his mother chose: _this’ll be the day that I die._ He’ll remember the strange feeling in his stomach, like it was a hole inside of him, an entirely empty space.

He’ll remember the dirt between his fingers. He’ll remember crying so hard he couldn’t see the last time he ever said, “Love you, Dad.”

He’ll remember, forever, the exact moment the coffin slipped beneath the edges of the earth. He’ll remember how it was like some part of him followed his father to the grave.

 _And the three men I admire most_  
_The father, son, and the holy ghost_  
_They caught the last train for the coast_  
_The day the music died._

**

**

**

**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recommended listening:
> 
> 01\. Yellow - Coldplay  
> 02\. We Don't Eat - James Vincent McMorrow  
> 03\. Carry You Home - Nashville Skyline  
> 04\. Stop and Stare - OneRepublic


	3. the chess players

 

She should watch as her boyfriend drives away. She knows this. She should watch, and she should cry. And yet…

And yet, as Mary Andrews backs out of the driveway—as Archie waves at the four of them—

Only Betty truly waves back; Betty, who always knows what to do in situations like these, when someone else needs comforting. Jughead kneels next to her, whispering into Vegas’s floppy golden ear as the dog whimpers and strains against his leash. Cheryl stands silently, clad in an ethereal white gown and a pink wool coat (the latter obviously belonging to a Cooper sister), one hand raised with a delicate lace handkerchief clutched between two fingers; this she allows to do her waving for her.

And she, Veronica Cecilia Lodge, can only stand with her coat pulled tight around her and be grateful for the icy breeze that’s whipping strands of hair against her face, pushing her pearls into her neck, and making her eyes water.

As Archie waves at the four of them, Veronica brings a black-gloved hand to the corner of her eye and, with her pinkie, dabs at the small tear that the wind has brought. Then she blinks her eyes shut, holding them closed for five whole seconds. When she opens them again, the rental car is so far down the block that she can’t even tell what color hair both passengers share.

Their little group waits in silence until the car has disappeared around a bend, and then Veronica waits some more, counting to fifteen under her breath before glancing around for her car and driver and saying, “I should go home.”

“What does ‘home’ even mean anymore?” Jughead wonders aloud, sounding like he’s not addressing the three of them so much as he is the world at large. “It’s supposed to be somewhere warm. Somewhere safe. Somewhere...”

Betty drops to the ground beside him, shuffling so she, too, can pet the dog. “We’re all home,” she says, that increasingly familiar stubborn lilt in her voice. Sometimes that lilt makes Veronica swell with pride; today, it makes the back of her neck prickle. “Riverdale is home for all of us. And Archie, too, even if he’s living somewhere else.”

Next to Veronica, Cheryl lets out a _tut_. “Cousin Betty, always so wise. Well, you all can remain in Archie’s driveway as long as you please. But it’s cold out here, and I’m afraid I’m overdue for my appointment with a moisturizing mask and some Baudelaire.” She stalks off towards the Cooper house without another word.

“We should go to Pop’s,” Betty says sharply. “For Archie.”

From the ground, Jughead mutters, “Uh, Betty,” and jerks his head at the dog.

“I’m sure Pop will let him in this one time. Or we can leave him in the car.” She looks at Veronica, and Veronica suddenly realizes that Betty intends to have Archie’s dog in _her_ car, with her driver, which…

“Sorry, Smithers is allergic,” Veronica improvises; she has no idea whether or not he is, but it’s a completely plausible and inarguable excuse. “And I’m afraid I do have to run. A third point: is Pop’s even open again, yet?”

Betty’s eyes narrow, ever so slightly. “What do you have to do?”

Veronica smoothes her gloved palms over her thighs, taking comfort in the feeling of the small bump where the hem of her miniskirt ends and her hands move onto her sleek silk stockings. Betty watches her do it: Betty, who’s crouched in the driveway of her neighbor’s house in her all-American blue jeans, cable-knit sweater, cute little bomber jacket, and practical boots. Betty, whose tears when the Andrews drove away were one hundred percent genuine. _Are_ one hundred percent genuine, Veronica corrects herself; Betty is once again crying, clear fat drops rolling silently down her pretty face.

Betty, whose boyfriend now removes his hand from the dog’s head to place comfortingly on her shoulder. Betty, who dips her head to the side until her cheek touches his knuckles.

Betty, who can love and be loved so _easily_ , and who knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what _home_ means.

Well, Veronica had tried the blue jeans. They hadn’t worked out so well.

“My mother wants me home, that’s all,” she says, falling back on the easiest excuse in the teenage handbook. “I think she’s just feeling… well, you know. She and Fred were close.”

Jughead stands up. “ _Were_ they?”

“They were,” Veronica says simply. “In high school, at least. Betty, call me tomorrow?”

She hugs her best friend, and she hugs her best friend’s boyfriend (he returns the gesture of affection, sort of, if reluctantly), and she pats her boyfriend’s dog lightly on his furry noggin, and then it hits her.

All morning—all week, really—she’s felt unmoored, as though she’s been dropped in a foreign country with no knowledge of the local customs, a feeling she’s never before experienced, not even when she _has_ been dropped in foreign countries with no knowledge of the local customs. But now, as she brushes the dog fur from her cashmere knit gloves, she knows one thing she can do. One thing.

“Let me give you some money,” she says to Jughead, inclining her head at the dog. “For _him_. I can’t help you take care of him, not really. But I can take care of his food.”

Jughead merely frowns at her winning smile.

“Mrs. Andrews already…” he says.

Veronica keeps her smile turned on. “Of course,” she says. “Well, if you need anything, you know where to find me.”

 

**  
  
**  
  
**

**

 

Jughead has always wanted a dog.

He’d asked for a dog for Christmas, years ago. A few trailers down from the Joneses lived a man whose dog gave birth to a litter of puppies around Thanksgiving, and Mr. Rodriguez let Jughead visit them once their eyes opened, let Jughead sit cross-legged on the living room floor while six squirming balls of fur tried to tumble over the walls of their cardboard box.

“Which one do you like best?” Mr. Rodriguez had asked, and Jughead pointed at a black-and-white puppy, the one that was having the least success making it out of the box. He liked that one, he’d decided at once, because it was struggling. If it was his puppy, he would help it; the puppy would understand how much he cared, and love him more for it. Jughead had only turned five a couple of months ago, but he’d already read enough books to know that if he had a dog, he’d have an automatic best friend—the kind that stayed with him always, maybe even slept in his bed. Archie was his best friend now, but Archie barely came over to his house at all, and never spent the night.

Mr. Rodriguez lifted the black-and-white puppy from the box and plopped it in Jughead’s lap, where it made a tiny, funny sort of noise, gnawed gently on Jughead’s index finger, and promptly fell asleep.

Jughead was instantly in love.

“Mr. Rodriguez says I can have one of the puppies when they’re old enough,” he told his father the next week, as they drove to that day’s construction site.

His father let out a little snickering laugh, impossible to interpret.

“It could be my Christmas present,” he added.

He put the request in his letter to Santa, too, though he was already mostly sure he didn’t believe in Santa. _Dear Santa, This year I would like the black and white puppy from Mr. Rodriguez’s dog. Love, Jughead_ , he wrote, in his neatest penmanship.

Then he made the mistake of telling his mother that he needed an envelope and a stamp, and she asked why. He handed her his letter to Santa, which she read. Then she rubbed a hand across her ever-swelling stomach and sighed heavily.

“We can’t afford a dog, baby,” she said, her voice flat despite the affectionate epithet. “Especially not with your sister on the way.”

“You wouldn’t have to buy it,” Jughead pointed out. He already knew Mr. Rodriguez was planning to let the puppies go free to good homes. (That his home was not always good was something he tried not to think about.) “Santa wouldn’t, either.”

His mother shook her head. “It’s not the cost of the dog, it’s the cost of taking care of the dog. Dogs need food, they need to go to the vet, they need—it doesn’t matter. We can’t afford it.” She tore his sheet of red construction paper in half, and gave the two halves back to him. “Write Santa a different letter, okay?”

That Christmas, Jughead unwrapped five presents: two used books from the thrift store, a package of socks, a package of underwear, and a shaggy stuffed dog. No one ever told him where the puppies went; they just seemed to disappear from Mr. Rodriguez’s trailer one at a time until all six were gone. For the next few years, every time he saw a black-and-white dog around town, he would wonder if it was the grown-up puppy that, in another lifetime, might have been his.

He’d wanted a dog for so long, and now he technically has one. But as Betty trudges through melting snow with Vegas’s leash looped around her wrist, all Jughead can think is: _not like this_.

Not like this. Not his best friend’s dog, and not under these circumstances.

(He would go his whole life without ever owning a dog, if it meant having Fred back.)

He shifts the half-eaten bag of Furina Two from one hip to another. At the crinkling of the heavy paper, both Betty and Vegas turn to look at him.

“Sorry, boy,” he says. “Not now.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to carry that for a while?” Betty asks, her brows knitted in concern. “It’s a long walk.”

Jughead shakes his head. “It’s fine.”

Their progress to Sunnyside is slow, impeded not just by the snow and the dog food, but by the dog himself. Vegas is well trained, but today he’s stopping to sniff nearly everything, and Betty doesn’t seem to have the heart to hurry him along.

“I’ve been thinking,” she says, as Vegas investigates a pinecone. “If you’re really sure the Serpents had nothing to do with Fred’s shooting, then—then I’ll believe you. Unless we find evidence to the contrary.”

 _You won’t_ , he thinks.

“We should talk to Kevin as soon as we can,” she continues. “Maybe he’ll have some inside information.”

“ _You_ should talk to Kevin,” he says, shrugging when Betty’s brow only gets more furrowed.

For a moment, she seems poised to embark on another one of her cheerleading speeches meant to convince him he belongs on the north side. But he’s not in the mood to explain that whatever friendship he might have with Kevin is due entirely to the fact that they both like her, not each other, and he’s in even less of a mood to dredge up the tired old topic of how Sheriff Keller feels about the Joneses.

“Betty, you know I’m starting at Southside High tomorrow. If you get a chance to talk to Kevin at school, while I’m not around, take it.”

She nods. “I wish you didn’t have to transfer right away,” she says. “Or at all.”

“Yeah, well.” He scuffs the toe of his boot into the ground once, and keeps walking.

 

**

 

Thomas Topaz isn’t home when they finally arrive at Sunnyside, but Toni greets them in the doorway, arms folded across her chest. She’s blowing a bubblegum bubble the size of a tennis ball, the pink of which matches her hair precisely, and she pops the bubble and snaps the gum back into her mouth as they approach.

“Boy, you’re just bringing the whole gang over, huh, Jones?” she says, clomping down the front steps. She extends a hand for Vegas to sniff, although her wide eyes remain focused on Betty. “So this is the dog.”

“This is Vegas,” he confirms. “And this is my girlfriend, Betty Cooper. Betty, Toni Topaz.”

“She’s not what I would have expected,” Toni says, raising her eyebrows at Betty’s brand-new coat and probably-expensive sweater.

Jughead can sense Betty bristling, even from a foot away, and glances up to see she’s biting back a pointed remark: _what were you expecting?_ , maybe, or _I’m right here_. He sees Toni’s point, though; even dressed down in jeans and a ponytail, Betty has always been too pretty, too put together, to look as though she belongs anywhere near the south side.

He feels Betty’s arm wrap around his waist, and she tugs herself close to him. It’s a downright possessive gesture, and for a brief, glorious moment, he’s positively giddy.

Toni unclips Vegas’s collar from his leash, and gestures inside. “Well, pooch, let’s get you settled.” She bounces lightly up the stairs and disappears into the trailer. Vegas wags his tail twice, but doesn’t follow.

“Am I invited in?” Betty murmurs, her brow crinkled in confusion.

He almost chuckles at the irony of Betty Cooper being _persona non grata_ —fresh-faced, polite, well-spoken Betty Cooper. Betty hasn’t spent enough time on the south side to understand that she sticks out like a sore thumb here. She doesn’t understand that the Southsiders distrust the Northsiders just as much as the Northsiders distrust them. He thinks it’s obvious that Toni is decidedly not inviting Betty inside just to prove a point, and he thinks it’s utterly unfair that on top of everything else going on right now, he might be involved in a power struggle over whether or not his girlfriend is welcome in his foster home just because Toni has decided to judge a book by its cover.

Jughead opens his mouth, intending to try to explain at least a few of the complications, and discovers that Betty, in true stubborn Betty fashion, has simply gone inside anyway.

 

**

 

Much later in the day—after Betty’s returned to the north side, after Thomas has met Vegas and declared him a “good boy,” after Jughead’s retreated to the tiny bedroom with his laptop and a packet of store-brand Pop Tarts—his phone rings.

He doesn’t answer it at first. He just stares in disbelief at the name on the lock screen.

The phone ceases ringing. He waits for a minute or two, but no voicemail icon pops up.

The phone starts ringing again. From the foot of the lumpy twin bed, Vegas’s ears perk up, as if to ask why Jughead isn’t answering. This time he picks up, but only because a voice in the back of his mind reminds him that it could be Jellybean on the other end of the line.

“Hello?”

“Hi, baby,” says his mother, sounding hesitant, almost scared.

They haven’t spoken since he’d called her from the bus station, bus ticket to Toledo in hand, and she told him she didn’t want him to come.

“What do you want?” he asks now, not caring whether he sounds rude or bitter.

“I talked to your father. He said… he said he’d gotten into some trouble?”

 _Trouble_ , Jughead thinks, recalling his father hunched over but resolute in the holding cell at the local jail, and then ashen and unshaven behind the Plexiglas at Shankshaw.

“That’s putting it mildly, yeah.”

“He said…”

Gladys Jones has always been good at silences. Long-suffering, drawn-out silences; passive-aggressive silences that come in short bursts; disappointed silences that last seconds, minutes, hours; depressed silences that last years.

Maybe it’s because he can’t see his mother’s face or read the slump of her shoulders, but this is a silence he can’t interpret at all.

“You shouldn’t be in foster care, Jughead,” she says. “You should come here.”

“What?” He scrambles to sit up straighter. “No. The Topazes are fine. I’m fine. I’m not leaving.”

“Your father is in jail for who knows how long, baby. You should come live with us. I’ll wire you the money for a bus ticket.”

A fresh wave of bitterness washes over him as he realizes his mother can’t even bring herself to say she _wants_ him in Toledo. She thinks his not wanting to come is about _money_? But all he says, again, is “I’m not leaving Riverdale.”

His mother puts forth a few more rounds of what sound to him like feeble arguments for him moving to Toledo before saying goodbye, arguments that exhaust him even though they’re easy to shoot down. The state may insist he stays with the Topazes, but it’s not as though he needs them. Hasn’t he essentially been taking care of himself for months now anyway? Hasn’t he been on his own since his mother and Jellybean left at the beginning of summer? He doesn’t need her either.

When the conversation’s over, he plugs his phone in to charge and sets his laptop aside. He considers the uneaten store-brand Pop Tarts.

 _Baby_ , he thinks, spitting out the word inside his own head; it tastes bad even there, when it’s nowhere near his tongue. _Baby_.

Then he flips himself around in bed, not caring that his feet are now on his pillow, and wraps an arm around Vegas, pressing his face into the dog’s soft fur.

Archie is gone.

Fred Andrews is gone. For all that he’d heard Fred question whether Jughead might have inherited FP’s troubles, he can’t help but believe—perhaps stupidly, perhaps naively— that Fred didn’t _really_ think so poorly of him.

Besides, isn’t the fact that he’s had to move in with a foster family just proof that Fred was right? Trouble _is_ following him. He might have his own space here, and he might be geographically closer to home, but what wouldn’t he give to be on the air mattress in Archie’s bedroom right now, headphones on to block out the sound of Archie and Fred watching football downstairs?

“Fred was like a second father to me,” he’d said at the funeral, practically glaring up at Archie as he spoke, because anger was all he had on his side in the fight against tears. _Like_ a second father, he’d said, thinking of the years before FP had fucked up that relationship, when he and Archie would hang out at construction sites after school. It was always Fred who gave them juice boxes, always Fred who insisted that homework get done before they could don oversized hard hats and start banging nails into boards. His own father taught him to shave, but Fred Andrews bought him the razor he’d learned with.

Not _like_ a second father at all, he thinks now. Not like. _Was_.

And now he’s gone.

Archie is gone, Fred is gone, his mother and Jellybean have _been_ gone, his father is gone…

His father is not gone permanently, not yet. But Jughead had seen Fred cold and motionless in his coffin, had helped shoulder the burden of that coffin at the cemetery. It was, and is still, impossible not to imagine a different body inside, one with dark, greasy hair and a snake tattoo winding its way across his lower back.

Jughead inhales deeply, taking in Vegas’s comforting scent.

He lays like that for a long, long time.

 

**  
  
**  
  
**

**

 

Veronica wakes not from the ringing of her alarm clock, but from a silent and nearly imperceptible shift in the atmosphere. While she slept, the air seems to have been smoothed over, coated in something cold and hard and glossy, and now it bumps against the warmest corners of her lungs when she breathes.

She stretches in bed as she always does, taking a moment to appreciate the feeling of satin against her skin. Pale, watery light filters through her curtains; this, she hopes, is not an indication of yet another round of unseasonable snow.

On her nightstand lays her phone, laden with unread messages from Archie. (The latest one, which she can read in the app without opening the thread and popping that red bubble, is a simple and straightforward _Ronnie?_ ) Veronica’s gaze carefully skims over any and all electronic devices and lands instead on her reading glasses, which she’d neglected to put back in their case last night. They rest on her lightly thumbed copy of _The Great Gatsby_ , which she’s currently halfway through for the second time; she acquainted herself with Daisy Buchanan for school last year, but trust Riverdale’s curriculum to be just a tad behind.

Pearls heavy around her neck, Veronica slips out of bed and into her silk robe, cinching the sash extra-tight around her waist. She crosses to her closet, throws the door open, and takes a moment to stand there with her eyes closed, breathing in her arsenal.

She’d tried the blue jeans, and those hadn’t worked out so well. Today, Veronica will go back to herself. She knows exactly what she needs.

“Where are you?” she says aloud, giving her closet a coy smile. The question is a purely rhetorical one; she already knows. She pulls the hanger from her closet before heading into her ensuite bathroom, removing her pearls, and starting the shower.

Half an hour later, Veronica stands in front of her full-length mirror, hands on her hips, one knee cocked slightly, and nods at the curves created—nay, _enhanced_ —by her combination of pose and perfectly tailored aubergine sheath. The four-inch black patent heels set off her calves, and her hair, equally dark and glossy, swishes just so when she turns her head to ensure that the back zip of her dress is perfectly straight. Her makeup is, as always, worthy of a _Vanity Flair_ cover.

Only one detail remains: for Veronica to fasten her pearls back around her neck. Once she does so, the strand comes to rest in its signature spot, just above her collarbone. She surveys her reflection in the mirror again, casting an evaluative eye from head to toe, and thinks: _Now, I am complete_.

“Good morning, Mother,” she calls as she strides into the dining room. But the figure seated at the head of the table, behind the coffee and orange juice and chocolate croissants, is not Veronica’s mother at all.

Hiram Lodge rises from his seat, the predatory, catlike smile that Veronica was once so proud to have inherited unfurling across his face.

“ _Mija_ ,” he says, hands automatically reaching to fasten the second button of his suit jacket. “How wonderful to see you.”

 

**

 

Though she knows today’s croissants—driven up with her father—are the best New York City has to offer, the pastry seems dry and crumbly in Veronica’s mouth. There isn’t enough orange juice in New York State to wash it down. A mimosa might help, but she really _can’t_ , not on a school morning.

“I didn’t realize you were getting out so soon, Daddy,” she says, popping a strawberry into her mouth to punctuate the sentence. She glances from her father to her mother, now seated at her father’s right hand, and then back again as Hermione slides her fingers over Hiram’s wrist.

“A stroke of good luck, Veronica,” he says. His tone is almost, but not quite, dismissive.

A year ago, Veronica would have relished that tone. A year ago, she would have understood the implicit _don’t ask questions, Veronica_ to mean _Daddy’s taking care of it, Veronica; you have nothing to worry about_. But now… now she’s not so sure. Her father’s arrest has changed her. The few months since she moved to Riverdale, since she started her Campaign for a Better Veronica Lodge, have changed her. Her friendships have changed her.

(With the tiniest of prickles, she realizes _Archie_ has changed her: good, kind-hearted Archie, who sometimes does the wrong thing, but for the right reasons. Archie, who’d seemed so uncomplicated at first but whom she now knows is far more complex than she’d thought, maybe more complex than any boy she’d dated before. Archie, who can play her body like she’s a sleek black Stratocaster, leaving smudged fingerprints in all the right places. Archie, who wouldn’t know what to tell her, but who would know the right questions to ask until she figured it out for herself.

Archie, who deserves so much more than a girl who pretends to be asleep when he tells her he loves her.)

When Veronica used to look at her father, she would see herself reflected back in his dark eyes. Does she see herself still?

Does she even want to?

She’s so lost in thought that it’s almost a shock when her father speaks again. “I was terribly sorry to hear about Fred Andrews.”

Her mother nods. “It was a tragedy,” she agrees, voice cool and impassive.

Veronica remembers her mother’s comportment at the funeral, how she’d oozed passionless tears and dabbed her eyes at each opportune moment.

“And I understand I won’t have the pleasure of meeting Fred’s son.”

“No,” Veronica agrees. “I’m afraid Archie’s already left for Chicago with his mother.”

“You must miss him.” Her father’s gaze bores into her. “Your mother says he’s stolen your heart right out of my hands, _mija_.”

Veronica misses not a beat. The role fits her like a glove, like a second skin, far better than her impeccably tailored aubergine sheath ever could.

“Don’t be silly, Daddy,” she says, careful not to oversell her smile. “No one could ever steal my heart from you.”

 

**

 

“I’ll drop you off at school today, Veronica,” Hiram says soon after, and so Veronica maintains her pretty Park Avenue smile and tells him how nice that will be.

The uniformed man in the garage, the man who holds open the town car door for her, is not Smithers. He’s young and handsome, with neatly cut dark hair, a flawless complexion, and a certain rigidity to his posture that makes Veronica uneasy for reasons she can’t place.

“Who’s this gentleman?”

“Ronnie, this is Andre. Andre, my daughter, Veronica.”

Andre nods, but does not speak.

“Is Smithers retiring?” Veronica asks.

“Not at all. But it’s high time we lightened his load a little.” Hiram adjusts his already impeccable cuffs before continuing “Andre will be assisting me; Smithers will continue to chauffeur you and your mother. You know how devoted he is to you both.”

Veronica smiles again, _still_ , the dutiful smile of a dutiful daughter. She’s not sure whether that smile is becoming easier or harder to maintain.

 

**

 

Being alone with her father—well, alone except for Andre, who’s partitioned off in the front seat—feels stranger than it should. It’s only been a few months, after all, and her father was _released;_ surely, surely that means he’s innocent?

“How are the kids at school treating you?” her father asks. “And the teachers?”

“Everything’s fine, Daddy.”

“You’ve made friends?”

She nods, wondering why her father’s chosen a line of small talk reminiscent of conversations they had when she was so much smaller. Those were younger, more innocent times, she supposes. Perhaps her father wants them back as much as she sometimes does.

“Quite a few, in fact. Did Mommy tell you I made the cheerleading squad?”

“Of course you did,” he says, almost absently, and he leans forward to tap on the partition. A window rolls down, seemingly of its own volition. “Andre, take a right here.”

“School is to the left, Daddy.” She knows he knows where Riverdale High is; how often has she heard him talk about his time there?

“We need to make a little detour first.”

“I’m going to be late.”

“Your teachers will forgive you just this once, I’m sure,” Hiram says, with a cold finality that sends a little shiver down Veronica’s spine. “This is important to the family business.”

He doesn’t give Andre any further directions, but they don’t seem to be necessary. Before too much longer, the car pulls up outside a high school—not Riverdale, but Southside High. Veronica winces internally at the sight of the decrepit brick and even more decrepit student body, then chastises herself: that kind of thought belongs to Old Veronica, not New Veronica.

“Good proximity to the land we already have,” her father muses. “Easy road access. These are the details you need to be looking for.”

“Why do I need to be looking at this kind of thing at all?”

Her father ignores the question. “Don’t start with where the right kind of people already are. Look for the kind of land you can turn into a place where the right kind of people will _want to be_.” He taps his temple with one index finger. “You’ve got to think three moves ahead in the game, Veronica. Always.”

Two slouched teenage figures walk past the car, a tallish boy in a gray hat and a very small girl with pink hair. Before Veronica can ascertain that the boy is Jughead, so she can wave, or maybe even roll down the window and offer some words of support—before she can ask her father if he means what she thinks he must—Hiram Lodge raps his knuckles on the divider, and Andre speeds away.

 

**  
  
**  
  
**

**

 

Before she even opens her eyes, Betty can hear the beginnings of a fight brewing downstairs.

Or, more accurately, the fight brewing downstairs is what wakes her up. After she’s conscious, she decides to squeeze her eyes shut tight, to take a moment to just… not acknowledge that it’s happening. If she opens her eyes now, she’ll have to start facing her day, a day that includes not just some combination of her parents, her sister, and her third cousin (or whatever Cheryl is) getting into it, but a day at school unlike any she’s known before. Only once in her life has Betty gone through school with both Archie _and_ Jughead absent, and that was due to a nasty stomach bug that skipped her and hit them. But they’d both been back in a few days, fully recovered.

This time, neither of them will return.

If she opens her eyes now, she’ll have to pull back her curtains; if she pulls back the curtains, she’ll have to see Archie’s room, dark and empty and shuttered forever.

(At least Jughead, no matter how unfair his situation may be, is still only a phone call away.)

From downstairs comes a small crash, the sound of breaking glass, and her mother’s sharp “You ungrateful little—” followed by something else smashing. There are a few more indistinct shouts, and then the front door slams shut.

If she opens her eyes now, she’ll have to go downstairs and help clean up the mess.

Betty opens her eyes.

 

**

 

When she gets downstairs, she finds a full pancake breakfast set out in a kitchen that’s been completely abandoned by everyone except Polly, who’s on her hands and knees, trying to mop up a shattered glass bottle of maple syrup from the floor.

“I’ll do that,” Betty says at once, kneeling down to relieve her sister.

Polly gives her an affectionate, but still somewhat dirty, look. “I’m pregnant, Betty. I’m not an invalid.”

“Yeah, but…”

“You have to get ready for school.”

“I have time to help you clean up,” she protests, but her sister shakes her head, and Betty decides not to fight further. “Pol, what happened here?”

“Mom and Cheryl had a fight,” Polly says, rather unnecessarily. “I’m not sure what about. I think it started with Cheryl complaining that our orange juice is the kind without pulp—”

Betty makes a face. “Who likes pulp?” The orange juice remains on the counter, in its pitcher, so she pours herself a glass.

“—and ended with our non-Blossom maple syrup on the kitchen floor. Then Cheryl hissed something about not being able to take this much longer and left through the front door, and Mom went out through the garage.”

“Where’s Dad?” Betty asks.

From the floor, Polly shrugs. “I don’t know.”

Betty plops a couple of pancakes onto a clean plate, butters them, and saws off an experimental bite with the side of a fork. A pancake without maple syrup, she decides, is kind of pointless—but they’re made, and she’s here, so she takes a second bite before getting up to see if there’s another bottle of maple syrup in the pantry.

There isn’t.

“Polly,” she says, sitting back down and reaching for a knife, “you are going back to school after the twins are born, right?”

Polly looks up at her and blinks once, twice. “I haven’t really thought much about it.”

“You haven’t _thought_ about it? What are you going to do with your life if you don’t have a diploma?”

“You sound like Mom,” Polly says, and then, “I don’t know. I haven’t ruled out going to the Farm, if they’ll have me. I don’t want to stay in Riverdale. Too many bad memories.”

“But you can’t just live there forever,” Betty protests.

After everything—Jason’s murder, Polly’s multiple disappearances, Mr. Andrews’ death, Archie moving to Chicago, Jughead changing schools—her sister can’t leave for good. She just can’t.

Polly looks up from the floor, all wide eyes and awed smile, and lays a hand on the roundest part of her stomach. “Every time I think of the Farm, they kick,” she says. “I think the Farm makes them happy, Betty. I think it's their way of telling me what they want to do.” 

 

**

 

Betty leaves the house not much later, with her blue backpack slung over one shoulder, the collar of her pea coat folded up to keep the wind off her neck, and an as-yet unanswered text to Jughead freshly sent from her phone. As she walks past Archie’s empty house, snow begins to fall.

 _Figures_ , she thinks.

She keeps walking. Alone.

 

**

 

Archie is perpetually five minutes late, a trait Betty learned to accommodate way back in first grade; old habits die hard, and so this morning she finds herself at school five minutes earlier than she intended (and she had already intended to be ten minutes early). She lets herself into the _Blue and Gold_ office and perches on the edge of a desk, studying the wall that had until very recently held Jason Blossom’s murder board. There are still a few newspaper clippings and Post-It Notes stuck up there, in fact, so her first order of business is to clear those away.

This small task accomplished, Betty returns to her perch.

She doesn’t have a picture of Mr. Andrews handy, and she can’t bring herself to print one; that wound is still too fresh, too raw. But she can start making some notes. She starts with the biggest question—assuming that this _was_ a premeditated murder, and not just a robbery gone wrong, who on earth could possibly have wanted Fred Andrews dead? Who would stand to benefit from Fred being permanently out of the way?

The question is so mind-blowingly unanswerable that she shakes her head and sets it aside for a moment.

She spots yet another scrap of paper about Jason still clinging to the wall even after her second purge, like Jason is determined to haunt her from beyond, is mocking her inability to get started on a second case.

Or—no. Maybe she’s going about this the wrong way. Maybe Jason is reminding her of something.

“What did I learn from solving Jason’s murder?” she asks herself, speaking the words aloud so that they echo in the empty room.

She learned people she thought she knew (not that she’d _known_ Clifford Blossom, per se, but) were capable of doing things too awful to contemplate. She learned the Blossoms were entangled in illegitimate business. Drugs.

But _Fred_ wasn’t. Fred couldn’t have been. She refuses to believe that of him.

When Betty goes to pull the final bit of Jason-related paper from the wall, her eye catches one of the most recent _Blue and Gold_ issues, the one in which she’d boldly proclaimed Jughead’s father innocent. And though FP’s hands are far from clean, he was, _is_ innocent of Jason’s murder.

Still, there was a connection. That’s something else she learned, that people and actions are often linked in ways that aren’t obvious, ways she wouldn’t necessarily think about right away.

For what feels like the millionth time already, she reminds herself that Jughead is convinced the Serpents had nothing to do with Fred’s shooting. She still doesn’t know what the Serpents said or did or showed him as proof, but she trusts his judgment.

She looks at her own headline again, and thinks about the aftermath of printing it. Not that she really thinks the words “Go to hell, Serpent slut,” painted on her locker in pig’s blood, are even tangentially related to Fred’s murder.

But one never knows.

After she’s made another note, imploring herself to keep trying to figure out who left her that disgusting message, she checks her phone. Jughead hasn’t responded to her text. It’s still early, though, and she knows he’s not much of a morning person.

Already this morning, Betty’s asked herself who would want Mr. Andrews dead, what she’d learned from her previous investigation, where there might be connections between everything going on in Riverdale. Now she adds a when _(when can we investigate)_ and a why _(why did the murderer go after Mr. Andrews in Pop’s, of all places?)_ to her list.

The bell rings, and she takes another look around the Jughead-free office before adding a final question.

_How am I supposed to run this paper alone?_

 

**  
  
**  
  
**

**

 

For the third time this morning, Toni widens her already-wide eyes at him and says, “You should’ve worn the jacket, Jones.”

She’d first advised him to wear it when he got up early to walk Vegas before school, as if he was going to get jumped if he took a dog around the trailer park without branding himself a Serpent. As if he hasn’t been safely wandering around the trailer park without a Serpent jacket on for his whole life. She’d mentioned the jacket a second time before they left on the short walk to Southside High.

And now, as they’re nearly run over from behind by an entirely-too-nice-for-this-side-of-the-tracks car, she’s brought it up a third time.

(Toni is wearing hers, of course, along with ripped jeans and a black t-shirt; there’s a plaid flannel shirt tied around her waist he’d have sworn she stole from him if he didn’t know better. The point is, he looks like he belongs here well enough as it is. It’s not like his clothing is wildly different than hers. Only the jacket and the fact that Toni’s t-shirt is a crop top differentiate them.)

Also for the third time this morning, Jughead rolls his eyes at her. “Not a Serpent.”

“I’m just saying, in my official capacity as your foster sister and peer mentor, you don’t know Southside High. It’s better to have a snake on your back than a target.”

“I can take care of myself,” he grumbles, with all the world-weariness of someone who has _always_ had a target on his back. How many times in his life has he been crammed in a locker, after all? How many times has he been shoved in the hallways, deliberately elbowed in gym class, had his lunch trays upended on the cafeteria floor?

But then they walk up the front steps and Jughead finds himself face-to-face with security guards and metal detectors, and there’s suddenly a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that he hasn’t felt since he was ten years old and all alone, trying to sleep on a cot in a cell at the county juvenile detention center, hugging his knees into his chest under the thinnest of blankets and stubbornly refusing to cry.

“Hat off,” says one of the security guards, gesturing at a battered TSA-style plastic bin.

“You’re kidding me,” Jughead replies.

He isn’t. The guard glares openly at Jughead, who glares surreptitiously back.

“Don’t fight it,” Toni advises; he decides she’s right in this case, and doesn’t.

He takes off his hat and drops it into the bin, along with his belt, his suspenders, and everything in his pockets. Something jostles against his phone, causing the screen to light up, and he sees he’s received a text from Betty. Once he’s clear of the metal detectors, he checks the message.

_Good luck on your first day at SSH. I’ll miss you. Call me later?_

Before he can type a reply, Toni’s at his side, jostling his arm so that his hand flies out of position. “Ol’ ball and chain got you down?”

“She’s not—” Jughead starts, but he’s interrupted almost immediately.

“Kidding. I’m sure Northside Barbie has her merits,” Toni says. “You ready for your tour?”

 

**

 

For as many times as Jughead might have insisted to Betty that he’s from the south side, that he belongs here and not on the north side of town, by lunchtime, he’s _almost_ willing to concede that he might not have fully thought through that claim.

Yes, he’s been shoved into north side lockers more often than he cares to count, but at least those lockers never looked like they might give him tetanus. He never liked gym class, wouldn’t have liked it even without the threat of “accidentally” getting elbowed in the face by Reggie Mantle, but at least Riverdale High _has_ gym class; Southside High just kind of has a vague, possibly toxic fog where all its extracurriculars should be. And any lunches that got upended on the floor at least started out edible.

“This is what, exactly?” he asks, poking a grayish sort of slop with his fork. When he’d eaten here before, on that weird orientation day, he’d been given a burger—not a great one, true, but it was recognizable as food. This lunch seems to be made out of whatever horses weren’t up to glue factory standards.

“We don’t ask,” Toni says firmly, “and we don’t eat it.”

“ _You_ don’t eat it,” says Sweet Pea, who’s been looming large at Jughead’s back since second period, along with a third Serpent Jughead hasn’t formally met before (but recognizes, vaguely, as having been at Sweet Pea’s side when Jughead made that ill-fated trip to the Wyrm) with the somewhat ominous moniker of Fangs Fogarty. Sweet Pea and Fangs are both forking down the slop, although neither of them look very happy about it.

Jughead still hasn’t managed to text Betty back, even though the teachers at Southside High seem to have no issue with (or control over) students using cell phones during class. He’s also fairly sure that the teachers at Riverside High made at least cursory efforts to educate their students.

And the Bulldogs, for all the problems Jughead had with them—legitimizing the social power of Reggie and his ilk, monopolizing Archie’s time, forcing the school to hold pep rallies—

Well, he’d never seen Reggie or Moose or Chuck casually flicking switchblades in the bathroom, as Sweet Pea had so casually done just a few minutes ago.

 _(Aren’t the metal detectors supposed to prevent those getting in?_ his brain had screamed, even as he knew perfectly well there were ways around almost anything. This is a school with a chain-link fence in the middle of the cafeteria, for god’s sake. Anything seems possible.)

He’d never heard rumors that any of the Bulldogs were cannibals, either. Ridiculous though the notion may be, he _is_ sitting with Serpents even if he’s not one himself, he knows one of those Serpents was very recently responsible for beating the shit out of a Ghoulie, and even if he’s adamantly clinging to the belief that said beating was _not_ something he’d asked anyone to administer, it’s hard to shake the feeling that approximately one-quarter of the Southside High students actively want to take a bite out of his arm.

In fact, a couple of Sweet Pea-sized Ghoulies are sizing him up from across the cafeteria at this very moment. One is running fingerless-gloved hands over the metal studs in his leather jacket; the other is fidget-spinning a set of brass knuckles on the tabletop. Jughead very deliberately does not look at them.

He _did not_ ask anyone to administer a beating. But do the Ghoulies know that?

“C’mon,” Toni says, standing up. “English.”

Jughead obediently follows her down yet another dank hallway, as do Fangs and Sweet Pea, but he comes to a halt outside the men’s room. “Give me a minute, okay?”

“I’m not waiting for you to take a piss,” Toni declares. “It’s room 115.”

There are three kids smoking under the window, but Jughead ignores them and they ignore him. He ducks into the open stall—it doesn’t have a door, but some privacy is better than none—and pulls out his phone.

_Good luck on your first day at SSH. I’ll miss you. Call me later?_

But every response he can think of seems wrong to express via text message. He closes his message app, opens a particular photo instead, and lets his vision go soft around the edges while he looks at her. The photo is one Veronica took a few weeks ago, him and Betty in a booth at Pop’s, but Jughead’s mind’s eye returns to his father’s trailer and to the night that already seems so long ago.

_Jughead Jones, I love you._

He’s still looking at Betty when the bell rings.

A minute later, he slides into the only vacant seat in the room. It is, naturally, right up front and center.

“Mr. Jones, I take it,” says the teacher.

Jughead nods _yes_ , then pulls the printed schedule from his pocket to check the teacher’s name. Mr. Phillips. Though he seems no more interested in Jughead’s presence than any of the other teachers have been so far, Mr. Phillips looks a little younger, a little hipper, a little more engaged than most of the others.

“You can share a book with Ms. Topaz for today’s discussion,” Mr. Phillips tells him. “I doubt the school library has any copies, but it shouldn’t be too hard for you to find one somewhere. Get yourself caught up as soon as you can. We’re due to be finished with it next week.”

He nods again, permitting himself a slight inward sigh at the thought of _one more thing_ to do—though to be fair, none of the other teachers have given him any homework whatsoever thus far, and if there’s anything he’s likely to get done in a few days, reading a novel is it.

There’s a rustle and a light thump as Toni retrieves the assigned book from her bag and tosses it on his desktop, crossing her arms over her chest once it’s skidded to a stop. “All yours. I’m finished with it.”

Jughead blinks once at the book, then scowls at it.

“What?” she says, scoffing. “ _To Kill a Mockingbird_ too on point for you?”

“No,” Jughead says. Hadn’t he been placed in the most advanced English class? It was the only subject he was actually doing well in before his transfer. “It’s just—I read this in _seventh grade_.”

“Yeah, well,” Toni sighs. “Welcome to Southside High.”

 

**  
  
**  
  
**

**

 

The little red number on her messaging app has grown from a reasonable 8 to an unlucky 13. Still, Veronica’s thumb only hovers over the icon. It’s hovering still when Betty plops down across from her, allowing her lunch tray a decidedly unladylike _bang_ on the cafeteria table.

“How are you holding up?” Betty asks, and that’s what finally induces Veronica to open the messages from Archie: not the desire to know what her boyfriend is up to, not the desire to offer him moral support in his time of need, but the fear that their mutual bestie might ask her a question about him, and she might be unable to answer it.

She skims Archie’s texts quickly before responding: nothing out of the ordinary, just a couple of progress reports on his and his mother’s journey, a _good night_ , a _good morning,_ a _miss you already_. She will text Archie back as soon as she can do so unseen; she will type _miss you too_ and punctuate it with a kiss emoji. This, she can do.

“Fine,” Veronica replies. There’s a beat during which Betty looks particularly expectant, and then Veronica remembers she’s not the only one with an absent boyfriend. She chastises herself briefly (how _could_ one fail to notice the absence of Jughead Jones at a mealtime; she’s almost forgotten what it’s like to have lunch without having to defend her French fries) before adding, “You?”

This mollifies Betty, who says, “Fine, I guess,” and then scans the cafeteria.

“It’s strange without the boys here, isn’t it?”

Betty snaps back to attention. “Hmm? Oh, no—well, it is, but—I was just looking for Cheryl. Have you seen her today?”

“I haven’t, no.”

“She and my mom had a huge fight before I got up this morning, and Cheryl stormed out. I was just wondering…” Betty contemplates her lunch tray for a moment, sucking her pretty lower lip between her teeth. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

“Cheryl Bombshell always snaps back quickly,” Veronica agrees, even though she is not entirely certain that this is the truth.

The panic she’d felt while watching her mermaid-haired friend slip under the ice of Sweetwater River comes back to her now, followed quickly by another wave of guilt. The panic _she_ had felt? No. The panic _Cheryl_ must have felt as she was the one slipping away; the panic Archie must have felt as he’d pounded frantically at the ice—and then Cheryl’s house burned down and Archie’s father was shot and—

“Veronica. _Veronica_.” Betty’s hand appears in front of her face, waving, and Veronica looks up. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

She smiles. “Veronica Lodge is coping,” she says, and then, because friends confide in each other, she adopts her most carefully casual tone and adds, “Guess what? Daddy’s been released from prison. He’s here now.”

Betty nearly chokes on nothing. “Oh my god, what? When?”

“This morning.”

“Wow,” Betty says, eyebrows raising. “That’s—wow. You must be relieved to have him back.”

“I am,” she agrees.

(Is she?)

She dips a French fry in ketchup and pops it into her mouth, chewing slowly while she thinks. Betty takes a bite of sandwich and continues to scan the cafeteria, presumably for Cheryl.

Veronica swallows.

“I’d love for you to meet him,” she says, and once again, Betty’s head snaps back to her, ponytail swishing smartly through the air. “Tonight, perhaps? We should all assemble at the Pembrooke after dinner—you, Jughead, Kevin, Cheryl. We can watch _The Matchelorette_. I’ll provide the popcorn.”

Betty, a ringer for Most Likely To Be Adored By Other People’s Parents honors in Riverdale High’s yearbook if ever there was one, nods. “Okay,” she agrees. “I mean, I don’t know what Jughead’s up to tonight, but I’ll ask him.”

A substantial amount of weight lifts from Veronica’s shoulders, exactly as though she’s just removed her heaviest fur-trimmed cape. “Excellent,” she says. “I’ll text the others.”

A substantial amount of weight is gone, but a substantial amount still remains.

“Have you heard from Archie today?” Betty asks, frowning slightly. “I tried calling him between periods, but he didn’t pick up.”

It’s only then Veronica realizes that she is literally clutching at her pearls.

 

**  
  
**  
  
**

**

 

Betty is ready and waiting, armed with what she hopes is an adequate combination of arguments and flattery, when Kevin enters the _Blue and Gold_ offices. He shimmies sideways through the door with his brow contorted in an expression of deep suspicion. In his left hand is a vending machine bag of the ranch-flavored chips Jughead favors. She knows Kevin has always liked them too, but they still seem to emphasize Jughead’s absence, and Betty’s heart gives a little pang.

“Okay, I’m here,” Kevin says. “What journalistic emergency is so intense that you needed a quote from me the minute school ended? Is it about the school’s imminently looming failure to hire a replacement for Ms. Grundy before the fall musical needs to be cast? Because I have a lot of opinions about that.”

“I don’t need a quote from you, Kev,” Betty says. “I need _you_.”

Kevin raises his eyebrows.

“To join the paper,” she clarifies, sweeping her hand at the empty desks surrounding her. “We’re very short-staffed, as you can see. I need people I can trust—”

“To replace your boyfriend?” Kevin says. Though she can tell that he’s pleased to have been asked, his comment comes out much blunter than Betty would prefer. “You need me _now_ , but you didn’t when you started the paper back up?”

“This isn’t about you replacing Jughead,” she says.

“Betty. I’m not dumb. This is entirely about Jughead transferring.”

“It’s not just because he transferred. We’d need more hands on deck anyway. But I do have a bigger vacancy, now, and—” She looks up with the most sincere, hopeful smile she can manage. “I can’t think of anyone better to fill the role than you. Honestly.”

Kevin’s eyes narrow. “You know flirting isn’t going to have the same effect on me as it does Jughead, right?”

“I’m not flirting,” she protests; which, honestly—aside from the fact that Kevin’s lack of susceptibility in that area means she would never bother trying, she’s still not even sure she knows how to flirt with anyone other than Jughead. “I’m just asking. Please, Kevin? I feel like I’ve hardly seen you these last couple of months.”

That, apparently, is the wrong line to use, because it earns her an even higher eyebrow. “And whose fault is that?”

“No one’s. We’ve both been busy.”

“We certainly have,” he agrees. “You with your boyfriend, me with mine. Except, oh, wait—mine transferred too. Out of the entire _town_ , Betty, not just to a school three miles down the road.”

“That’s one of the reasons I need you, specifically,” she argues. “You have a different perspective on the Serpents than most people on the north side. You know as well as I do that they’re getting blamed for a lot of stuff they didn’t do.”

“A lot of stuff your boyfriend’s father _says_ they didn’t do,” Kevin corrects. “And a lot of stuff they may very well have done. You know what I think you need me to do? Point out that the Riverdale High student paper is not supposed to be devoted entirely to covering the activities of the town’s most notorious motorcycle gang. Which, again, relates to your boyfriend—”

“Jughead isn’t a Serpent,” Betty says, feeling more than a prickle of annoyance. “Joaquin actually was, Kevin, so don’t act all—” She stops talking, though, when she catches a little gleam of moisture in the corner of Kevin’s eye. “Oh, my god. You really do miss him.”

“Of _course_ I miss him! Did you think I wouldn’t miss someone who actually liked me? The only guy comfortable enough with himself to openly date me? Come on, Betty. Your boyfriend might be weird, but no one thinks you shouldn’t be holding hands in public, least of all him.”

“You’re right,” Betty says, nodding slowly. Kevin hasn’t explicitly said that she should have known all of this without being told, but she hears the criticism anyway, and the truth of it stings her. She knows her attention has been divided as of late (though, she thinks, rightfully so), and almost none of it has been given to him. And she knows Kevin deserves better than that. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Kev. I never meant—”

“I know you didn’t _mean_ ,” he sighs. “That’s part of the problem, you know? You can get away with not even thinking about that kind of thing.”

He opens the bag of chips and offers her one; she doesn’t want any, but reaches into the bag anyway, just to be polite.

“Okay,” Kevin says, after he’s eaten three chips and licked his fingers clean of ranch dust. “I’ll join your little rag. But I have conditions. One, you have to let me start a gossip column.”

“Kev, I don’t—” she starts, but his judgemental eyebrow is back, and she stops herself from protesting. “All right. You can have a gossip column. What else?”

He swallows once, then opens his mouth without speaking, staring at the floor in a fit of sudden and unexpected bashfulness.

“Kevin,” Betty says softly, putting a hand on his upper arm. “What else?”

“Don’t laugh.”

“Would I?”

“I don’t know! I might laugh, if I told me.”

“I promise I won’t.”

“Okay,” he sighs, crinkling the bag of chips over and over in his hands. “I want to try out for wrestling this year.”

She almost _does_ laugh—because she wasn’t expecting it, not because the idea of Kevin on the wrestling team is funny—but is immediately sobered when the realization that she’s let their friendship deteriorate to the point that he felt embarrassed to tell her this simple desire hits her.

“You should totally try out.” She thinks about how right that seems, Kevin in a sport that combines strategy and strength, and smiles. “You’ll be great. And I promise we can work your newspaper duties around practices.”

And then, before she can overthink it, she takes a step forward and hugs him as hard as she can.

“Then I guess I’m in.” He stiffens for half a second, then relaxes again. “Also, you should know I fully plan to take the male lead in this year’s musical, assuming the school gets its head out of its own ass regarding any and all situations with music.”

“Perfect,” Betty says, as they break the hug. “We can work around that, too. We’ll start on the next issue tomorrow. Can you get a gossip column together by the end of the week?”

He shoots her his best faux-offended look. “Betty Cooper. I can get a gossip column together by the end of the _hour_. Oh, speaking of gossip—this isn’t for publication, but—” Kevin shoots his eyes back and forth across the room, as though he imagines someone is spying on them, then leans in for a dramatic behind-the-hand whisper. “Word in the sheriff’s office is that a certain Washington bureaucratic agency is due to be in town soon. They’ll be investigating the fire at your third cousin’s quaint family estate.”

“The FBI coming to check out the Blossoms? Yeah, I know.”

Kevin sits bolt upright. “You do? How?”

“Cheryl told me,” she says, blankly. “She’s living with my family right now, she—”

“Oh, my _god_.” In a flash, Kevin’s dragged up a chair and plopped himself in it. He crosses one ankle over the other knee, leans forward, and gives her a ridiculously expectant look. “Betty. I want to know _everything_.”

 

**  
  
**  
  
**

**

 

By the time the final bell rings—a strangled, half-hearted sound, as though it too has given up—the near-omnipresent gnawing sensation in the pit of Jughead’s stomach has upped itself from a tickling sort of grumble to an all-out roar. There’s a more eloquent way he could phrase that, he’s sure, but he’s going to need at least three hundred calories before it comes to him.

(He doesn’t know how much food equals three hundred calories. He only knows he’s hungrier than usual, and unlike his locker at Riverdale High, this one isn’t full of snacks. He knows, too, that there’s a text from Betty on his phone, a hopeful-sounding text, informing him that she’s already on her way to Pop’s and inviting him to Veronica’s that night.)

“Well, Jones, you survived,” Toni says.

She’s been a constant presence throughout the day—saving seats for him in every class they share, hovering at his elbow in the hallways like he wouldn’t be able to find his way around without her. Nice though it’s been to have something resembling an ally on his first day, he can’t let himself forget that Toni isn’t helping him because she wants to be his friend; she’s helping him because she wants him to be a Serpent. Perhaps luckily, perhaps not, the constant presence of Fangs and Sweet Pea at _her_ side has been an excellent reminder thus far.

“Yeah.” Jughead starts trying to close his locker door; something about the hinges is off, and it’s almost impossible to get the thing lined up well enough to fasten his padlock on it. “Tomorrow’s another day, though. There’s hope for me yet.”

Sweet Pea bangs an enormous fist into Jughead’s locker door, which shuts at once, and leers over him. “But will you survive the quarry?”

“Quarry?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know the quarry, Jones. You, a Southsider and all.”

“I know the quarry,” Jughead grumbles, glaring at Sweet Pea before he snaps the padlock onto his locker door.

The north side of town has a municipal swimming pool; though the south side residents _legally_ have access to all Riverdale’s resources, he’s never seen a Southsider other than himself there, and he, of course, has only ever been when Archie’s dragged him along. Southsiders swim at an old, abandoned, well-flooded granite quarry that’s privately owned by an unknown person or persons who makes only a cursory effort to keep anyone from trespassing.

Once a year or so, a new section of chain-link fence is installed over whatever hole has been cut in the old one; it usually takes less than twelve hours before a new hole appears. The quarry is where Jughead learned to swim, badly, following the time-honored Jones family tradition of his father simply throwing him in the water and waiting to see what happened.

(He sank at least a dozen times.)

“He means we’re going to the quarry now,” Toni says, rolling her eyes at Sweet Pea. “Coming?”

“I, uh.” Jughead looks from the two of them to Fangs, who merely raises his eyebrows and gives Jughead a little half-smile. “Yeah, I don’t have my beach body yet.”

“Don’t be such a snake in the mud, Jones,” says Sweet Pea. “We’re not _swimming_. It’s fucking snowing.”

“It’s _stick_ in the mud,” Jughead snaps, “and I’m not.”

“Not in the mud?”

“I’m not a snake.”

Sweet Pea grins, a dangerous and shimmering smile that sends a chill down Jughead’s spine. “Not _yet_.”

Toni steps between the two of them, her tiny body completely ineffective at shielding Jughead from the sinister look still in Sweet Pea’s eyes, and places a hand on each of their chests.

“Easy, boys,” she says, as though breaking up near-fights between people literally twice her size is something she does every day—and, well. Considering Sweet Pea, it probably is. “Look, Jughead. We’re just gonna hang for a while, maybe light a couple barrel fires.”

“It’ll be a goddamn weenie roast,” Sweet Pea adds, leering in such a way that makes Jughead almost certain that he himself is the weenie.

“Yeah, that’s okay,” Jughead says. “I gotta get back to Sunnyside. Walk the dog. You know.”

Toni shrugs. “My grandpa can handle that. He’s probably already walked him a few times today. Couple more won’t make a difference.”

“A _couple_ more walks? How many hours were you planning to spend at the quarry?”

“There’s a Serpent meeting at the Wyrm tonight.” Toni’s voice remains cool—not in the sense that she’s expressing dislike towards him, but in the sense that he feels as though he’s suddenly landed in a 1990s sitcom, in the middle of a Very Special Episode about peer pressure, and hers is the siren song he’s being challenged to resist.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Jughead says. “I’ll see you back at Sunnyside tonight, okay?”

He slings his messenger bag over his shoulder and stomps away. He does not look back.

 

**

 

Ten minutes later, he crosses over the railroad tracks that separate south from north and walks into Pop’s. The diner is as empty as he’s ever seen it, with only one customer at the counter; it makes sense, he supposes, that some folks in town might have reservations about eating in a restaurant where a man was so recently shot and killed.

The sole customer is Betty, and she is a sight for sore eyes.

“Jug,” she says, standing up from her seat. She’s in a form-fitting pale pink sweater and her usual ponytail today, silver necklace glittering at her throat, that little key pendant marking the exact spot he’d planted his lips only a few days ago. “Pop, we’re going to move to a booth, okay? Hi,” she adds, looking almost shy as he arrives at her side. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

Before they claim their usual booth, Jughead ducks down to kiss her, slipping his hand behind her ear; it’s only when he feels her smile into his lips, pause for a moment, and kiss back harder that he realizes said hand has been quivering.

But no, there was no need to worry. He may have changed schools, but he’s still _himself_ , still the Southside Weirdo Grunge Ken to her Northside Barbie.

(Still hardly able to believe that she loves him, even as she grabs the fleece lapels of his jacket to tug him closer.)

Today, he opts to sit in the same side of the booth instead of across from her. Under the table, Betty laces their fingers together.

“I ordered for you,” she says, and then, “How was Southside?”

He sighs. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

Betty leans back, tilts her forehead two inches to the right, and raises her eyebrows with a little smile he knows all too well, the one that means she’s going to make him talk about it.

“Are you asking if I made any new friends?”

“No,” she says, the smile dropping from her face. “I assume you spent the day with Toni.”

“I did,” he admits, and Betty’s mouth turns right into a frowny little pout. “What? You’re not—”

“I’m not jealous, Jughead,” she sighs. “I’m frustrated. School was lonely for me today, even with Veronica there. And I know I’ll get used to it, but I don’t want to. Cheryl and my mom had a big fight this morning, Polly’s—I still don’t know what Polly is—and I had to practically bribe Kevin to join the _Blue and Gold_ , just so I’d have another set of hands around. And it doesn’t even feel fair for me to be complaining, not when everyone else has things so much worse.”

He squeezes her hand tighter.

“So what about you? Are you going to join the newspaper at Southside?” She pauses. “Do they even have a paper?”

He scoffs. “What makes you think I’m not already the editor-in-chief?”

“Just the fact that you only started going there today, and—wait. You’re not kidding, are you?”

“Nope,” he says, letting himself grin just a little bit. “The _Red and Black_ is all mine. Conditionally. I have to keep myself from pissing off the English teacher too much. They won’t let me run a paper without ‘supervision.’”

“That’s great, though.” Betty leans in to give him a kiss on the cheek. “I’m proud of you.”

It’s not _much_ to be proud of, but he’ll take it.

 

**  
  
**  
  
**

**

 

 _The Matchelorette_ starts at eight o’clock. At precisely fifteen minutes before the hour, Smithers answers a knock at the door. All four of Veronica’s friends are there, clearly rounded into a neat and tidy group by Betty, who has—and bless her, really—touched up her makeup for the occasion, and gone just the tiniest bit too far with it.

(Cheryl’s lips bear their usual flawless blood-red coat of armor, far more obvious than Betty’s pink gloss—but Cheryl makes it look effortless. Not for the first time, Veronica considers that she may just be the walking embodiment of the “I woke up like this” hashtag.)

“Welcome to my humble abode,” Veronica says, sweeping a hand across the entryway. Most of them have been here before, of course, but as always, the performance of hosting grounds her. She studies their faces as she walks backwards to lead them through to the living room: Kevin, sharp-eyed and overeager; Betty, not entirely sure what to do with her hands; Jughead and Cheryl, opposite sides of an uncommon coin, both trying hard to look unimpressed for what Veronica assumes to be vastly different reasons. She and Kevin keep up a stream of inconsequential chatter about this season’s casting choices; the conversation flows easily until they turn a corner and Kevin suddenly falls silent.

Four sets of eyes fix on a spot just beyond Veronica’s left shoulder. Betty smooths her palms over her thighs; Cheryl all but licks her lips.

Without looking behind her, Veronica says, “Daddy, I’d like you to meet my friends. Kevin, Cheryl, Betty, Jughead, this is my father, Hiram Lodge.”

Her father appears first in her peripheral vision, blurry, then comes into focus as he walks forward with a hand extended. He shakes Kevin’s hand first, giving a little nod of approval at Kevin’s grip, and then shakes with Betty and Jughead. Cheryl, naturally, opts to extend her hand princess-style.

Hiram Lodge does not miss a beat; he simply places a two-second kiss just above Cheryl’s knuckle. He swiftly straightens, nods somewhat approvingly, and says, “So, you’re Veronica’s classmates?”

Veronica, Betty, Kevin, and even Cheryl nod politely, but Jughead—dear, prickly, stubborn Jughead—says, almost glibly, “ _Former_ classmate.”

Hiram lifts a brow in response, and Veronica hurries to provide a smooth explanation before Jughead can open his mouth again. “Jughead just transferred to Southside High.”

“A Southside man, huh?” Her father’s almost jocular as he takes a second, more thorough look at Jughead’s attire, and she can see the mental recalculations run right across his face: this isn’t the carefully curated outfit of someone who shops at the thrift store for sartorial effect, but the unironic wardrobe of someone who shops there out of necessity. “Jughead… _Jones_ , did you say it was?”

Jughead’s eyes narrow in suspicion. “I didn’t, but yes.”

“Come along, everybody, the popcorn’s this way!” Veronica chirps. Unsure as to what effect glaring at Jughead might have—her first guess is that it will only spark a soliloquy to rival the internal monologue of a Raymond Chandler novel—she glares at Jughead’s girlfriend instead, silently pleading with Betty: _If you know what’s good for the both of you, you will make him shut up._

Thankfully, Betty seems to get some sort of message, if perhaps not the one Veronica was intending; she shoots a confused, slightly angry look back, but nevertheless grabs Jughead by the elbow and forcibly maneuvers him into the living room.

Jughead plops himself onto the davenport. “So that’s the infamous Hiram Lodge.”

“In the flesh,” Veronica says. She waits until the rest of her friends have chosen seats, then begins distributing the promised popcorn. When she had prepared this popcorn for them earlier, she decided that the Waterford crystal bowls were the most appropriate serving vessels the Lodge kitchens had to offer.

But now, looking at the crosshatched clear glass against the checkered black and blue of Jughead’s rumpled flannel shirt, a wish flits through her mind: why can’t she, for once, be the girl who serves popcorn in a big plastic tub, or at the very least, Siestaware? Why can’t she be the girl who watches guilty-pleasure television in blue jeans and sneakers, snuggled into her boyfriend’s side?

(She and Archie have never snuggled. They have made love and lain together afterwards, her head resting elegantly on Archie’s broad chest while he stroked her hair. But Veronica Lodge does not _snuggle_.)

She takes a seat on the divan, next to Cheryl, and folds her hands primly in her lap; Veronica Lodge does not fidget, either.

“Nicely done, Veronica,” Cheryl says, examining a single popcorn kernel held between two vermillion-tipped claws. “He’ll make an excellent new addition to the Riverdale Hot Dads Society.” Betty, Jughead, and Kevin all goggle at Cheryl, as though she’s grown a second head, and Cheryl drops her voice. “I didn’t mean it like _that_.”

And even though she was just thinking about Archie, it takes Veronica half a second to realize that the others all took Cheryl’s remark as a crack about Fred.

Even though she was just thinking about Archie.

As they’re waiting for _The Matchelorette_ to start, Veronica whips out her phone and pans around the room for a quick panorama shot. It’s not Kevin’s best angle, but he doesn’t need to know about the photo, which she sends off to Archie with the words _TV night. Wish you were here!_

Archie, she reminds herself, had never wanted the girl in blue jeans and sneakers. Archie had wanted the girl in the aubergine sheath and patent-leather heels.

Veronica Lodge does not snuggle. But her body thrums now with the need for contact, for closeness, for the feeling of a heartbeat that isn’t her own.

Hedging her bets, she scoots sideways, fitting herself against Cheryl’s side and resting her head on Cheryl’s closest shoulder. For a moment, Cheryl tenses; Veronica can feel, if not see, a vaguely murderous expression flit across the other girl’s face. But then Cheryl lets out a huff of breath, and her fingers slip into Veronica’s.

“If you must,” she mutters, so softly that no one but Veronica can hear.  
  


**  
  
**  
  
**

**

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [chapter playlist can be heard here](https://8tracks.com/pawneegoddess/a-deed-without-a-name-chapter-3):
> 
> 01\. Jeff Buckley - Last Goodbye  
> 02\. The Beach Boys - I Know There's an Answer  
> 03\. PJ Harvey - Good Fortune  
> 04\. Rilo Kiley - Dreamworld  
> 05\. AC Newman - Thunderbolts  
> 06\. Elton John - Grey Seal  
> 07\. Radiohead - Just  
> 08\. The Joy Formidable - Little Blimp  
> 09\. Regina Spektor - Wallet  
> 10\. Neko Case - Gumball Blue  
> 11\. Rufus Wainwright - Evil Angel  
> 12\. PHOX - Raspberry Seed
> 
> \----------
> 
> And so the plot thickens. 
> 
> As always, your feedback would be very much appreciated.


	4. dazed and confused

 **

So much about the world Betty knows is different now.

The illusion was shattered when she came home from her summer internship to find out Polly was gone; things changed even more when Jason Blossom died and Archie had an affair with a teacher and Veronica Lodge came swooping into town. Everything after the previous summer was just so different.

But some of it was _good_ different. The unexpected friendship with Veronica. Making a name for herself by joining the Vixens and restarting the paper. And _Jughead_ was a more than welcome change: the way Betty’s heart sped up ever so slightly when they first brushed shoulders in the _Blue and Gold_ offices, the newly-unguarded softness in his eyes while he looked at her, how she thought her heart might burst the first time he kissed her and then again when he said _I love you_ ; it all is the most beautiful kind of change.

Then Mr. Andrews was shot. And the world as she knew it changed all over again.

And now, even though he’s only been at Southside High for a few days, something seems different about Jughead. He spends their latest afternoon Pop’s date inhaling two burgers and complaining about the shitty cafeteria food, but Betty can tell that something deeper is bothering him. Loath to become the embodiment of _Northside Barbie_ that Jughead’s foster sister thinks she is, Betty doesn’t press it; the knowledge that he’s keeping things from her prickles under her skin, but now that they don’t get to spend school days together, she doesn’t want to use up their limited parent-free time pressuring him to talk about whatever it is that’s bothering him.

“If we’re digging into this Black Hood thing, I suppose we’ll have to find a new location for the murder board,” Jughead mumbles through his mouthful of onion rings and fries.

This stirs Betty out of her thoughts.

“What do you mean? The _Blue and Gold_ has plenty of space,” she says.

Jughead looks like he’s choosing his words very carefully before he begins speaking. “Well, yeah, but now that I’m not at Riverdale High it’s probably not the best location anymore.”

“Oh,” she says. “Okay.” Maybe it hadn’t felt real yet, but the realization that her time with Jughead at the _Blue and Gold_ is truly over sits heavy on Betty’s chest. So much of their relationship had blossomed while hunched over rickety desks and writing suspect names on sticky notes or reworking Jughead’s defiantly terrible coverage of sporting events.

_One door closes and another one opens,_ is the saying. It could mean another positive step for them but something about this one closing feels a little more ominous.

Seemingly unaware of Betty’s inner turmoil over something as trivial as moving the location of their murder board (which, in and of itself, is not at _all_ trivial), Jughead moves on with the topic. “We could always use my dad’s trailer, I still have the keys and everything. It’ll probably only have heat for a few more weeks until the utilities get shut off but, uh, it’s got the space and we, um,” he pauses to clear his throat nervously, “we can always keep warm other ways.”

As she blinks in surprise, Betty is hit with flashes of the night before everything went to hell—the burn of Jughead’s hands under her shirt, the warm press of his lips at the top of her breasts, the powerful want that simmered low in her belly. And then again when he climbed through her window the next day, reminding her first of a simpler time and then reminding her that moving beyond simple—moving to legs hooked around hips and to letting instinct take over—isn’t a bad thing. Her cheeks burn with the memory and she can see Jughead swallow thickly from across the formica table.

Though they’ve talked briefly about that first night, her whispered assurance that _god, no_ she didn’t want to stop, what happened still feels fresh. Or, what _almost_ happened, what likely would have happened had the Serpents not come calling.

And with that memory crashing through, the blush rising on Betty’s cheeks cools.

“Sure,” she mutters. “As long as we’re not interrupted again but a bunch of gang memb—”

Jughead looks like he’s about to say something, but they’re both cut off by Kevin barging through the front door of the diner, setting the jingling bells off with a crash. “You will not _believe_ what I just heard from my dad,” he says, voice breathy with the drama of it all, before plopping himself right next to Betty and eating a cold fry off her plate.

“Oh, hi, Kevin, please come join us.” Jughead glares half-heartedly at him, but Kevin merely waves him off.

“Trust me, you’ll want to hear this. Dad got a call from the Greendale Sheriff’s Department this morning and guess who was found strangled to death in her home this morning?” Kevin doesn’t give them time to open their mouths, let alone guess. “ _Geraldine Grundy._ ”

“Holy shit,” breathes Jughead, just as Betty lets out a high-pitched, “ _Oh my god._ ”  

“It’s crazy, isn’t it? I’d almost feel bad but, like, karma and everything, y’know?” Only Kevin could credibly pull off a look of sheer delight at the news of a woman’s death. But, Betty supposes, he does have a point. 

“You don’t ...you don’t think we should tell Archie, do you?” she says softly. “I mean, I know what she did was terrible but it really messed him up and he did have feelings for her, however manipulated and misguided they were.”

Jughead makes a face that clearly says _yikes._ “I dunno. It might not make the best first phone call after moving away because his dad was killed. ‘ _Hey, Arch, I know we’re all still mourning your dad but remember that cougar who took advantage of you over the summer? Turns out she’s dead, too.’”_

She wants to narrow her eyes and chastise Jughead for being so blasé, but Betty’s throat catches at the subject matter of his sarcasm. What Archie is going through—what they’re _all_ going through—is hard enough. “You’re probably right,” she concedes.

Eventually Kevin flits out as dramatically as he had entered, citing his need to meet his dad at the office to try to suss out more details. In the silence his absence leaves, Jughead moves over to Betty’s side of the booth and wraps a comforting arm around her, running his hand across the juncture of her arm and shoulder.

“I know they were totally different MOs,” Jughead starts thoughtfully. “But I wonder if Fred and Grundy’s deaths might be connected. This town is small, but it’s not _that_ small.”  

Betty sighs before leaning into him and resting her head on his shoulder. “Guess we need to start that new murder board after all.”

 

**

**

**

**

 

Maybe there’s something to it, this _being part of a community_ thing, Jughead thinks. Toni’s friends—the kids he’s seen around the trailer park for years, the youngest faction of the Serpents—welcome him with, if not open, then at least tolerant arms. After a few glares from Toni, they tone down the Northsider jokes, let him take open seats near them in class, talk to him at lunch like he’s a real person. It’s almost unsettling to be seen for who he is instead of the loner in the corner, or Archie’s best friend, or Betty’s boyfriend; it’s like he isn’t entirely sure who he is _without_ those attachments.

A loud voice in the back of his head reminds Jughead that they’re only extending courtesy in an effort to get him to join up. But still, he’s heard the phrase _Serpents take care of their own_ from his father enough times in his life, and now several times from Toni—someone his own age who isn’t blindly drunk and beaten down by the world—and he’s starting to think that maybe being part of something larger isn’t the worst idea in the world.

Then again, his father is in prison as an accessory to murder, an act he had partaken in only because of his involvement with the Southside Serpents. And Joaquin, another younger Serpent who ostensibly had other things going for him, hadn’t blinked twice when he assumed FP was responsible for the murder of a teenager.

Community or not, that kind of blasé attitude doesn’t sit well with Jughead.

It’s nice, at least, to have someone to walk home from school with. Toni may pointedly tell him to wear his dad’s Serpent jacket every chance she gets, but her constant presence and chattering is comforting. Jughead sees why Archie and Betty walked to and from school together so much. Something about the mindless activity of putting distance between himself and the events of the day puts him at ease. 

With a pang, Jughead remembers that Betty doesn’t have Archie to walk home with anymore; Archie doesn’t have a father anymore and, in two completely different ways, neither does Jughead. The reality of their lives weighs heavy on his shoulders, much heavier than he imagines a leather jacket with a green emblem would weigh.

There’s already enough going on.

“Hellooooo, earth to Forsythe,” calls Toni.

The use of his proper name shakes Jughead out of nauseating grief and he’s glad for the distraction when he can snap at her. “Don’t call me that.”

“Well, then answer the first three times I use your nickname, dumbass.” Regardless of the moniker, Toni is looking at him with something akin to endearment. “I was asking if you wanted to come hang out with me, Fangs, and Sweet Pea at the Wyrm. No Serpent business tonight, scout's honor. We’re just gonna see if Sweet Pea can top his Street Fighter score. I owe him help on algebra homework if he does.”

It’s such an innocuous, mundane invitation that Jughead nearly says yes. Video games and ragging on each other and pretending to do homework; it’s what he and Archie did most of their childhood and every day that Jughead stayed with him and Fred. Again at the thought of Fred, Jughead’s stomach drops. He’s struck with the intense need to curl up in a ball with Vegas and cry.

Not exactly something he wants anyone, let alone his tough-looking foster sister, to see. 

When he mumbles a _no thanks_ to Toni, she gives him such an intense look that he’s surprised he isn’t reduced to two feet tall. He hasn’t seen that kind of ferocity from someone so small since Veronica Lodge came swanning into town.

“Look, Jones,” Toni says. She starts sharply to get his attention but her voice softens as she goes on, much like a mother scolding a toddler might speak. “I can’t pretend that I don’t think you refusing to join the Serpents is a terrible idea. Now that you’re out of the land of letterman jackets and pom-poms,”—Jughead bristles at the obvious dig toward Betty—“it’s not going to do you any good to hang out in the shadows. I already told you, it’s going to be easier if you replace that target on your back with a snake.”

When he opens his mouth to protest, Toni cuts him off. “I’m not finished yet.” She waits until he snaps his jaw shut and then continues. “Lone wolf, not your dad, you love your girlfriend, yadda yadda. Whatever your rationale is for not joining, I don’t really give a crap. It’s your prerogative to do whatever you do or don’t want to do in life. All I’m saying is that just because we’ve joined, it doesn’t make me or Sweets or any of the other teens in the Serpents the enemies of your state. We’ve all dealt with more or less of the same crappy hand of cards from growing up in this shithole, we all have family who skipped town or is dead or treats us like garbage. The least you can do is take that at face value, jacket or no jacket, and accept the olive branch before it turns into a snake and bites your hand off.”

Toni crosses her arms and cocks a hip, waiting expectantly for Jughead to respond. She looks so much like Jellybean in that moment—pint-sized, defiant, fighting for what she wants. Another wave of nausea hits him when he thinks about how much he misses his real family.

“I’m not refusing the olive branch,” Jughead weighs each word of his response carefully. The last thing he needs to do is make an enemy out of Toni. “I’m just ...trying to figure out what my life is right now. In case you didn’t notice, most of my shit just hit the fan. My dad is in prison for disposing of _Jason goddamn Blossom’s_ dead body. My best friend’s dad was killed in a robbery. I’m not exactly in the mood to play video games.” He swallows the golf ball sized lump at the back of his throat and tries to glare back at Toni just as defiantly, even though he’s about twelve seconds away from crying.

Toni nods her head in acknowledgement and he’s grateful to see no pity behind her eyes. “Fair enough, _Jughead.”_ He knows in this instance that the use of his name and not his last name is deliberate; it feels like the first of many steps in Toni, and the others, seeing him as himself and not as an extension of his father.

Baby steps, he thinks to himself. Baby steps.

 

**

**

**

**

 

Betty knows better than most that there’s a placating comfort in spending time with a neighbor; living parallel lives mere meters apart brings about a kinship that cannot quite be explained. It’s part of what makes— _made_ , she corrects on a hard swallow—her and Archie such good friends, growing up at the same speed in the same space for nearly fifteen years and sharing so many experiences like first broken bones or bike rides and the transition from grade to middle to high school.  

Not seeing the glow of lamplight in Archie’s bedroom has been harder than Betty ever anticipated. The weight of his absence reminds her so strongly of how she felt when Polly was gone that she’s cracked the door of Polly’s bedroom open late at night, just to confirm she’s still there, more times than strictly necessary.

After finally getting over her ill-advised childhood crush on Archie, Betty realized that his place in her life is best suited as her neighbor, her best friend, her de facto brother. She misses him so much it hurts. (And she doesn’t even _want_ to think about how much she misses Mr. Andrews, that hurt is near-indescribable.)

So she gets it, the tendency to gravitate toward your neighbor.

And yet, somehow, Betty’s stomach churns unpleasantly when she walks through Sunnyside’s patchy yards to find Jughead and Toni, whom she _knows_ doesn’t like her, hanging outside and playing a half-hearted game of fetch with Vegas, who had never quite grasped the concept of the game.

Jughead’s face is the most relaxed she’s seen it in weeks and he must be laughing at something Toni said. The lump at the back of Betty’s throat grows more prominent at the fact that she wasn’t the one bringing him back to smiles and laughter; she’s his girlfriend, she’s _Betty Cooper,_ she should be the one helping him feel more like himself.

Vegas is the first to notice Betty’s approach, taking off in the complete opposite direction from where Jughead tossed the tennis ball to come greet her with a wag of his tail and sloppy lick on her hand.

“Hi buddy,” she croons, crouching down to scratch behind his ears. His big brown puppy dog eyes take her back to Saturdays in Archie’s backyard, eating popsicles and trying to make Vegas their own (or, really, Betty’s own) hound of Baskerville. The lump makes it hard to swallow now.

When she looks up, Jughead is a few paces away with a soft smile and Toni is perched against the trailer wall trying and failing to keep a sour look off her face. Betty vaguely understands that she must stand for everything Toni hates about the north side of town, but still irks her that she hasn’t even gotten the benefit of the doubt.

Instead Betty focuses her attention on Jughead. “Hey you,” he says, extending a hand to help her back up into a standing position. “I didn’t realize you were coming, I would have met you to walk you over. You shouldn’t be walking around here by yourself.”

The concern comes from a place of love, she knows. Jughead is only looking out for her and she really doesn’t want to pick a fight in front of Toni. So she grits her teeth and responds with a soft, “I’m a big girl, Jug. I can walk across town. But I’ll call you next time.”

His shoulders sag in relief before pulling her into his arms for a hug. The worn flannel and scent of his soap feels like coming home and Betty wants to sink into his embrace until the rest of the world fades away.

In the background, Toni rolls her eyes and tuts in annoyance while shrugging into her Serpent jacket. She tosses an, “Offer still stands, Jughead,” over her shoulder before striding off in the opposite direction. The yellow eyes of the snake patch stare down Betty and Jughead as Toni retreats and, once again, Betty thinks back to how comfortably Jughead put on his own version of the jacket—his _father’s_ jacket, a reminder of his legacy—so recently. It makes her skin crawl.

Involuntarily, she shudders at the thought. Jughead mistakes the action for her being too cold and tugs her in the direction of FP’s trailer. “Come on, let’s get inside and warm up.”

(Betty tries very hard not to focus on his previous double entendre about keeping warm in the trailer, tries hard not to think about how simple and plain she looks in comparison to Toni with the flashy hair and ripped tights and petite body that even Veronica would be jealous of, tries once again not to shiver at the ghost of Jughead’s lips trailing down to the fabric of her bra. Tries and fails not to wonder if she trusts Jughead enough to let him look at her with all her clothes off. She _does_ , she knows she does. Whatever the world throws her, Betty knows she can trust Jughead with everything. She tries hard not to forget that.)

The Jones trailer looks just as it did the last time Betty was there, seemingly undisturbed by funerals or prison sentences or rogue murderers running loose. It’s comforting, almost, that this one place isn’t ripe with the scent of change and turmoil. There are jackets on the coat hook she knows are FP’s, a few stray books are scattered across the coffee table (one open to a dog-eared page full of Jughead’s cramped handwriting), even one of her own scarves is peeking out from behind the couch where it must have fallen days or even weeks ago.

“I should probably get everything cleared out of here while the power’s still on,” mutters Jughead.

“No, don’t.” The words surprise Betty as much as they do Jughead. “I just mean, well. Like it or not, Jug, this was—and might be again—your home. Don’t feel like you have to change it just because you think you should.”

What she wants to say and doesn’t is that if Jughead cleans and packs up the trailer, the place where they truly opened up to each other will cease to exist. Everything else in Riverdale, everything that once was so stable in Betty’s life, has changed fundamentally and nearly beyond repair; Jughead is her new constant and she’s grateful for it, but a piece of her wants to hold onto the trailer as the one tangible location where her most recent memory was one of happiness.

Something shifts in Jughead’s expression, and she thinks he may understand her deeper meaning. If he doesn’t, he says nothing. Instead, he closes the distance between them to press a hard kiss again her lips.

“I should at least wash the dishes in the sink before they start to grow things, Betts,” he says wryly.

It takes them a little while to finish washing the near-dozen coffee cups and singular plate—“Honestly, Juggie, your veins are probably eighty percent coffee now.”—mainly because they get distracted when Betty wipes a soapy hand on his flannel and Jughead retaliates by chasing her around the living room with a mug full of old coffee. They end the disagreement by kissing softly leaned up against the kitchen table.

Both pairs of hands are restless but stay wrapped around shoulders, and there’s still enough room between them to satisfy a chaperone. Even if Betty would much prefer to tell Jughead it’s okay to put his hands under her shirt again because she wants them to work their way back up to where they were the night of the Jubilee, the journalist in her knows they should get to work.

Jughead whines when she pulls away, pressing a few light kisses just under her jaw in an effort to keep her from moving. She nearly gives in. But the reality of _why_ things will never again be the same as that night weighs heavy on her mind.

“I brought murder board supplies,” she murmurs.

“Gee, Betts, you really know how to kill a mood.” His tone is teasing, but Betty’s stomach still sinks a little at the comment.

“Well, then,” she singsongs, trying to bolster herself and remember that the fact of her boyfriend’s lips on her neck means he isn’t actually annoyed at her. “How about this? I also snuck some pictures of Sheriff Keller’s files last time I went over to Kevin’s house.”  

His lips leave her skin. She only briefly mourns the loss, delighting instead in the look of awed surprise in Jughead’s eyes. “ _Alright,_ Nancy Drew,” he cheers. “Let’s do this.” They sit cross-legged on the floor as Betty unpacks her backpack like it’s Mary Poppins’ carpetbag. Distracted as she may be, Alice Cooper’s hawk eye is still on a swivel so Betty had to carefully conceal the spoils of her drugstore trip.

Before she’s even pulled everything out, Jughead tears into a fresh pack of sticky notes and starts to scribble something down. He’s clambered up the couch and is halfway to pressing _HIRED GUN?_ on the wall behind it when Betty stops him.

“Wait, wait! I bought rolls of butcher paper. I thought we’d want a method to remove the board without messing up our notes in case we have to hide this from people.”

The impressed look flickers across his face again and Betty’s chest bubbles with something akin to pride. “You’re going to make one hell of an investigative journalist, Betty,” he praises.

She tries to not think too hard about how much one comment of approval from her boyfriend strengthens her confidence before tearing off three wide strips of paper and handing them to Jughead to thumbtack horizontally above the couch.

 

**

 

The pair spends a few blissfully single-minded hours focused on the task at hand: squinting hard at the grainy printouts of the covert photos of Keller’s files, digging back through their old Grundy information for suspects on her case, and theorizing as to whether there were any connections between Grundy and Fred Andrews that would warrant a similar motive in their deaths.

Despite everything that’s happened, despite the context of the crime they’re investigating, it is immensely satisfying to theorize with Jughead again. It feels good to be doing something productive after so many days of forced passivity.

It’s morbid, she knows, to feel so at peace while researching the murder of her childhood best friend’s father, but it helps Betty to keep a tenuous grasp on the chaotic narrative around her. And Jughead gets it, he’s always understood her need to do as much as she can to help a situation—he understood it when it was them trying to track down Polly, trying to figure out what happened to Jason, and now in trying to locate Fred’s killer. Some days, Betty feels like Jughead is the only person in the world who understands her, even better than she understands herself.

Which is why, after a sixth failed attempt to decipher a pixelated sentence from the sheriff’s files, when Betty is frustrated to the point of tears, she doesn’t fight it when Jughead gently tugs the papers out of her hands and pulls her up to the couch with him.

Once he’s situated them so her legs are across his lap, he rubs a hand over her knee in reassurance. “These will all still be here tomorrow. We’re allowed to take a break, Betty.”

A break sounds nice, she decides. Especially when the heat of Jughead’s palm feels so good through the fabric of her jeans. Biting her lip, Betty stills his hand on one of its passes higher up on her thigh. He swallows hard a few times before sliding their joined hands up to rest on her hip and moving to hover his body over hers. They kiss like they had before for a while, mouths mostly closed and bodies distinctly separated, until the arm Jughead is using to prop himself up on buckles at the elbow and their bodies are suddenly _very_ close together.

The puff of breath that Betty releases at the shock of his full weight on her seems to spur them both on; Betty frees her hands to wind fingers into the soft hairs at the base of his neck and Jughead nips lightly at her bottom lip before soothing it and slipping his tongue into her mouth. The heady sensation of it all has her sighing happily— _this_ is what sixteen is supposed to feel like, this giddy relief of making out with her boyfriend and silently wishing for him to take her shirt off, not the weight of funerals and gang members and drug trades.

She lets out a quiet moan when Jughead squeezes her hip tightly and slides his lips down her jaw to mouth at her pulse point. His hips jut sharply against hers in response to the noise and she can feel that he’s hard. Betty hitches one leg up to keep him pressed against her and she is falling into this indescribable feeling, relishing in the way his mouth feels on her neck, in his hands sneaking under her shirt, the strands of his hair gripped tight beneath her fingers. His own fingers reach the barrier of her bra clasp and start to fumble, and then—

“Jughead!” Once again, there’s a loud knocking on the trailer door and Betty is so infuriated by the déjà vu that she could cry. “Gramps says dinner is ready next door. Betty’s invited too, since I assume she’s in there with you.”

Jughead’s hands are frozen and Betty can tell he actually succeeded in getting one of the two hooks of her bra undone. He moves back up to her mouth, kissing her lightly and whispering, “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” is all she can say in response.

She decides not to stay for dinner.

 

**

 

If the extended lunch group had been deemed “sad Breakfast Club” before, it was nothing to what they were now: Betty, Veronica, and Kevin make for a uniquely depressing trio.

Kevin puts a moratorium on murder discussions, citing the fact that his father talks enough shop over dinner that he’d like to have at least one crime-free meal a day. To that, Betty swallows her comment that she needs to discuss the task at hand before her mind eats her alive and turns to Veronica asking, “Are things getting better with your dad home?”

Veronica chokes politely on her seltzer.

“We’re still adjusting,” she says in her most diplomatic voice. “How’s Jughead doing over at Miss Peregrine’s school for peculiar flannel-wearing miscreants?”

Betty thinks of the cold greetings from Toni, the tattered chemistry textbook that replaced Jughead’s Riverdale High copy, and the ever-watchful yellow eyes of the snakes on every Serpents jacket.

“He’s fine.” Her answer is short and a pregnant pause settles awkwardly over them all. There are simply too many elephants in the room to discuss, each of them steadfastly ignoring their respective beasts.

“God this is sad,” bemoans Kevin. “We’re young, we’re hot, and we’re holed up in this stupid office like we’re hiding from the Plastics.”

Betty pouts, half in jest, half in legitimate protest. “Hey, leave my paper alone.”

(Veronica bristles at the implication she would ever hide from anyone.)

“Either way, Betty. We all need to do something fun and glamorous—” Veronica opens her mouth, likely to suggest something ludicrous and _actually_ glamorous, but Kevin doesn’t let her finish. “—but since this is Riverdale, murder capital of the world, and my dad’s talking about implementing a curfew if anything else weird happens, the height of glamor we’ll get is Reggie’s party this weekend.” He stares down each girl, quirking an eyebrow in his best _you shouldn’t even think about saying no to me_ face. “So we _will_ be going to his belated Halloween party and we _will_ be dressing up, because you’re _going_ to indulge your best gay friend.”

Veronica’s mood seems to improve in an instant, but Betty requires more convincing. “Kev, I don’t know. My mom barely lets me out of the house to see Jug as it is. She’s not going to let one daughter out to go to a house party when the other is home, six months pregnant.”

The glint in Veronica’s eye tells Betty all she needs to know about trying to refuse attendance. “What Mrs. Cooper doesn’t know won’t hurt her. We’ll say you’re sleeping at my house, which you totally can. _Or,”_ she says in a playful tone. “You can go stay with lover boy for some alone time.”

“God knows one of us should be getting laid,” mumbles Kevin.

Face aflame, Betty does her best not to move a muscle. Kevin takes pity on her by moving directly onto what party problems may plague them, without a moment to discuss anybody’s sexual activity, or lack thereof.

“We’ll definitely need to take a shopping trip. Reggie’s Vixen du jour, who I heard might be  _Josie_ , talked him into requiring decades-themed costumes, which is definitely in all our favors. Now I just have to figure out what Moose and Midge are planning to wear because I need to be the exact opposite. The last thing I want or need is a matching outfit meet-cute where I have to worry about accidentally letting my face show that I’ve had my tongue down Midge’s boyfriend’s throat.”

Despite the rambling nature of Kevin’s change of subject, they welcome the inanity of something so trivial and teenage as costumes and parties and jilted lovers.

“Tell me more about this whole Moose and Midge situation, I’m dying of curiosity.” Veronica fully leans in to the conversation, perching her chin in her hands and waiting expectantly.   

“Moose is one-hundred percent closeted,” Kevin starts, fully ready to dive into the dramatics for Veronica and leaving Betty nothing to do but listen or be left to her own thoughts. “Not that it stopped him from propositioning me in the bathroom during the back-to-school dance.”

“I thought they were always on again, off again, though, right Kev?” supplies Betty. Happy to have the floor, and seemingly pleased that Betty is willing to converse about non-murder-investigation topics, Kevin takes off at a million miles an hour.

“They are firmly in the on again phase right now. They’ve been crazy PDA-y the last couple weeks and I feel like anytime I walk into a room, Moose is trying to prove himself as the quintessential, _very straight_ man’s man because I’ve seen his hands on her ass more times than is necessary.”

“He’s probably overcompensating to prove to you and to remind himself he’s happy in his relationship and doesn’t need to explore whatever it is he was exploring with you.” Veronica clucks sympathetically before continuing. “Which isn’t fair at all to you, even if you did have Joaquin in the interim. So we’ll just make sure we all look fabulous on Saturday night and Betty and I will help find you your own boytoy to distract yourself with, right, B?”

“Absolutely,” she says, plastering some manufactured enthusiasm on her face.

“Excellent,” cheers Veronica. “I could use a fun mission right now. Anything to stop thinking about how weird it is without Archie here.”

It’s Betty and Kevin’s turn to turn toward the sympathetic and Betty moves toward Veronica to wrap her friend in a hug. “I know, I miss him a lot too, Ronnie. I feel like even a school across town is too far for me and Jug, so I can’t even imagine how it must feel for you guys to be fully long-distance.”

Veronica clears her throat, giving herself time to think, and runs an anxious hand along the line of pearls against her neck. “We all have our crosses to bear.”

 

**

 

After a _third_ interrupted moment of things getting closer to ...more, Betty decides she doesn’t quite trust herself or Jughead to not fall into the exact same predicament for a fourth time without careful planning. It’s how they end up in one of the large corner booths at Pop’s on Thursday afternoon, chemistry textbooks covering some of their investigation notes.

(Betty is diligently working on her lab report while Jughead, whose new chemistry class is nearly four chapters behind Riverdale High, writes down theories after copying over old lab write-ups into his new Southside High notebook.)

It feels comfortable and relaxed, for which Betty is grateful. As has been the norm since starting at Southside, Jughead is in an indecipherable mood when they first meet up that eventually melts away into his usual self—admittedly still morose, but with a healthier dose of quips and smiles and kisses pressed against her lips that taste like his chocolate shake.

She’s stretched out in the booth, legs slung over his lap and smiling to herself at how nice it feels to have his palm pressed against the seam of her jeans—which is _very nice._ It feels very, very nice, and that is precisely why they are in public, at Pop’s, lest they both give into hormones and have another unexpected visitor at the exact moment Jughead’s hand successfully finds its way under her bra. Betty feels content in way she knows she shouldn’t, given the circumstances of everything else going on.

As though the universe hears her thoughts, the contentment loses its shine with a jingle of the diner’s door and the appearance of pastel-streaked hair.

“What’s up, lovebirds,” Toni says as she plops into the booth. Betty sits up. Jughead clears his throat awkwardly before removing his hand from Betty’s thigh and she’s immediately disgruntled until the hand finds a new home on her shoulder, pulling her out of the reclined position so it can rub circles at the space where her sweater collar meets skin.

“Hi, Toni,” Betty says politely. She’s fighting every Cooper instinct when she immediately returns to her notebook; she doesn’t want to give Toni the satisfaction of appearing too eager, too Northside, so she fights fire with fire and ignores her right back.

As she pointedly stares at square of the graph-lined paper, a small part of her hopes Toni expresses something close to approval in response. Betty likes to think a blatant rebuff might impress her, even if it goes against every bone in her own body.

 

**

 

It’s not technically eavesdropping when the conversation is happening right next to you, but given that Betty is pretending to be otherwise occupied while Jughead and Toni talk, she feels unsettled.

Or maybe unsettled isn’t quite the word. But she’s definitely annoyed that she’s become the third wheel in a hangout with her own boyfriend.

The conversation topics that they cover aren’t all that different from anything Jughead might have talked about with her, Archie, and Veronica—a few jokes about school, daily annoyances like the crappy internet at Sunnyside, and the like—and it makes Betty purse her lips. If things are so similar on the south side, why is Jughead insisting that he doesn’t fit in with her on the north side?

Still frowning, she puts the finishing touches on her lap report with a flourish (circling the final calculations with a green pen) and pulls Jughead’s Black Hood notes toward her.

“Got a big test or something, Blondie?” Toni fixes her with a pointed stare and Betty sets her jaw at the thinly-veiled insult.

“Nope,” she answers, popping on the ‘p.’ “Just trying to figure out who shot and killed our best friend’s dad, that’s all.” Now Toni _does_ raise her eyebrows in near-approval and an immense satisfaction runs through Betty's spine. Serves her right, trying to make her feel bad.

If Jughead is tense at the prospect of mediating between his girlfriend and his foster sister, he doesn’t show it. He does, though, wind his fingers through Betty’s to kiss their joined hands before pressing another kiss on her lips. It’s quick, but still hard enough to leave her head buzzing when he separates their mouths. 

“It’s okay, Betts,” he assures her, eyes back on Toni in a silent _knock it off._ “Why don’t we call it a day on that one. It’s just going to stress both of us out.”

On pure instinct, Betty curls her hands into fists out of frustration; her nails prick almost pleasantly against one palm, but the other is caught in Jughead’s grasp still, which she’s forgotten until he whips back to face her, eyes wide with concern.

_Damn it all,_ she thinks. She’d been so pulled together, keeping her hands flexed to the point of discomfort throughout the hours in the hospital, the funeral, Archie’s goodbyes. Betty is infuriated with herself that something as trivial as Jughead’s new south side habits and foster sister get the best of her.

“I’m okay,” she whispers into his ear, careful not to let Toni hear. The last thing Betty wants is for anyone else, let alone someone looking for another reason to dislike her, to know about her bad habits. “I’ll just get some air.”

Jughead squeezes her hand in response and presses a kiss to her cheek as he moves to let her out of the booth. Despite the locale and the company, her mind’s eye narrows down until it’s just the two of them, against the world. He makes her feel so safe, so loved.

It’s an addictive feeling, she thinks. Being in love.

The cool November air feels good against her skin as she leans against the wall of Pop’s, surveying the parking lot. It’s empty, save for Pop’s own pick up truck, Jughead’s motorcycle, and a similar one parked right next to it that must be Toni’s.

Pop’s aging pickup truck makes her think of Fred Andrews’ truck and her heart beats double time. It isn’t fair that the world took two people at once that she loved so much, albeit in two entirely different ways. The thought makes her pull out her phone and select a photo of Vegas from a few days ago. She texts it to Archie with  _We all love you!_ before heading back inside.

The atmosphere had shifted by the time she returns. Jughead kisses her hard again when she slides into the booth and something about this one leaves her with a pang in her stomach, the way Jughead doesn’t meet her eye after and Toni rolls her eyes. Betty remembers what Kevin said about Moose overcompensating with PDA and swallows hard.

Desperate to think of anything else, she blurts out, “Oh, Juggie, I forgot to ask you earlier. Reggie is apparently throwing a party this weekend and Veronica and I have to go wingman for Kevin. It’s a decades theme party, but I promise I won’t make you dress up if you come.”

She can hear Toni snort from across the table and immediately regrets the timing of her ask. So she’s incredibly surprised when Jughead agrees so quickly. “You’d better buy me a milkshake, but, sure Betts, might as well.”

Betty beams happily until Toni chimes in. “Theme party on the north side? Count me the hell in.”

 

**

**

**

**

 

Nothing has made Veronica feel like her old, Manhattan self—for better or worse—than getting dressed for a party while sipping a glass of $400 vodka stolen from her father’s collection. Many things about her life in the Pembrooke, in Riverdale, have changed drastically since the unexpected return of her father, but the restocking of the gilded bar cart in the penthouse foyer is a welcome change at least.

Admittedly, since neither Betty nor Kevin are drinking with her while they prepare—Kevin says he’ll wait for the punch and Betty declines politely like she’s been trained to—Veronica didn’t need to clutch at the crystal on-the-rocks glass filled with far too much liquor for this early in the night. She doesn’t need to be drunker than her two friends before even leaving the penthouse. Veronica easily could have done what she’d done for her previous (and first, and _only_ thus far)two Riverdale parties and drink shitty beer from a red plastic cup.

It doesn’t escape her that at the end of both those parties, Veronica wound up in the arms of one Archie Andrews. If, at the end of the night, she wouldn’t have the same result as before, what was the point of starting it the same either.

As the top-shelf vodka burns down her throat and she tells beautiful, blonde, all-American girl Betty Cooper to close her eyes so she can apply eyeliner, Veronica wonders if she’ll ever feel as wholesome and content as she did wrapped in the arms of all-American boy Archie Andrews.

(The bigger question, she might wonder, is whether or not she wants to.)

 

**

 

While getting dressed, they hole up in Veronica’s suite, playing music loudly enough that it could be heard from where her parents are conversing behind closed doors. The very air of the building has changed since their family of three reunited, thick with the tension of unspoken words, and she’s felt like she needed to hide in her own home. It’s an uncomfortable feeling.

When they emerge, Hermione and Hiram Lodge are nowhere to be seen and Veronica is grateful. Her mother has met Betty and Kevin plenty of times before, even commented that she admired the kind of friendship she and Betty were forming; her father, though, was a harder read, and Veronica couldn’t quite tell whether her _Matchelorette_ viewing night had been the correct move.

Everything was always such an elaborate game of chess with him, but Veronica’s skills had grown rusty while she was busy making friends and completing homework assignments and inching toward something that _maybe_ kind of, sort of feels a _tiny bit_ like a certain feeling that starts a capital L.

(Not that Veronica would deign to call it _that_ , not when she couldn’t even bring herself to admit she was awake when Archie _did_ say that.)

And with that thought, she promptly drains the glass of vodka and leaves the empty crystal on the island countertop.

Hiram’s move.

“Alright, you two,” she says, clapping her hands to get their attention as Betty helps Kevin straighten his bowtie. “Final once-overs before we head out. Everyone spin, one at a time.”

Betty twirls delicately, unsteady on her borrowed heels, before Kevin does a showman’s spin. Veronica thinks Kevin looks ridiculous in his powder blue suit, but in a dashing way only he can pull off, and Betty looks like a grown-up version of herself, despite the nervous way she’s fidgeting with the neckline of her dress.

As always, Veronica knows she looks good, but it’s nice to hear the friendly cheers reflected back to her after lauding praise on her two friends. Her sixties-style swing dress is a brilliant magenta, paired with patent leather boots and perfectly coiffed hair, and she runs a light touch over the pearls at her neck.

“Do these go with the dress or should I leave them?” she asks.

Betty shrugs, “I think it’s fine either way. Whichever you want, V.”

Veronica pivots to Kevin, blinking expectantly. He hums in thought before answering. “It’s not _totally_ the right accessory, but it certainly doesn’t ruin the aesthetic. I say keep them on.”

She lets out a breath slowly.

One more quick swig out of her father’s liquor bottle and then: “Let’s go!”

 

**

**

**

**

 

On any given Saturday, Jughead does not want to attend one of Reggie Mantle’s infamous parties. He especially doesn’t want to be walking in without Betty, because he did agree to attend only because she asked in the patented Betty Cooper voice, wavering in a way that only he knows means she would have been crushed—but said nothing—if he said no.

(It’s the voice she responds to Alice with far too often, bending herself into an agreeable shape despite what she actually wants. And he’ll be damned before he lets himself be the reason Betty suppresses her emotions.)

But on this particular Saturday night, the absolute last thing Jughead wants to be doing is walking into Reggie’s party, without Betty, but _with_ several Southside High acquaintances. He’s flanked by Serpent jackets as he, Toni, Sweet Pea, and Fangs traipse across town and walk up a painfully pristine front walkway.

Where the presence of worn leather and stitched hisses grant Jughead a degree of anonymity and allow him to fly under the radar at school on the south side—despite what Toni says—they are instant targets on the north side.

A hush doesn’t exactly settle over the crowd when Sweet Pea scoffs at Jughead’s hesitation and barges through the front door, but his purposeful intimidation does the trick. A chorus of “holy shit,” “wait ‘til Reggie sees this,” and “who invited the snakes?” ripples through the cluster of people in the entryway.

Jughead hates everything about this.

In contrast, his newfound friends seem to be thoroughly enjoying themselves. After a wolfish wink sends the girls around the bar cart scattering—who has a _bar cart_ at a high school party?—Sweet Pea helps himself to a healthy pour from the open bottle of scotch.

“One thing I love about Northsider parties is that they have no idea how good the liquor they’ve got is.”

In response to Sweet Pea, Toni mimes a tip of her hat before snatching the red cup from his hand and downing the rest of it.

“Fangs? Jones?”

Surprisingly enough, Fangs also shakes his head, though with a roll of his eyes. “Come on newbie, let’s go find the fancy party snacks before these two pour anymore lighter fluid on top of empty stomachs.”

_Food,_ Jughead can get on board with.

They wade through the writhing crowd, one mass mirroring the folds of times past by drinking cheap beer and their parents’ liquor while decked out in everything from flapper dresses to bell bottoms to nineties neon.

(None of them had dressed up, Toni citing their jackets as _eighties enough_ and pointedly quirking an eye at Jughead’s choice of denim and sherpa.

At this point, she didn’t need to voice the sentiment. He can hear her voice slowly changing tone each time she suggests it.   _You should wear the jacket_ evolved to _you really ought to think about it,_ to _you’re a dumbass if you don’t,_ all the way to this silent _fine but it’s your fucking funeral_. Jughead still doesn’t want to put it on.

And yet.

While he may feel out of place as the only denim in a sea of leather at school, slipping back into this Riverdale High, Northsider world feels about as comfortable as a snake out of grass. Whatever their misgivings about him, this trio had let Jughead into their fold. That had to mean something.)

Through a mouthful of chips, Jughead mumbles, “I told Betty I’d find her once we got in.” At this, Sweet Pea rolls his eyes and Toni coughs something that sounds like _“Whipped!”_ into her drink.

The growing flame of goodwill toward them flickers, then goes out. Jughead scowls, wishing even more vehemently that he wasn’t there. The two disappear to “make the rounds,” and their black melts away into the sea of red cups. 

“I’ll come with,” offers Fangs. “I want to find the keg anyway.” 

They both find what they’re looking for in the crowded kitchen.

Jughead has always found Betty beautiful, whether it was at age nine with her hair in pigtails and dirt on her face, or age fifteen in her pink sweaters, or sixteen with her hand on his neck and her lips on his. Yet somehow she floors him every time.

Even among spilled beer and rowdy teenagers, she looks like a walking ray of sunshine. The dress she has on is almost daisy yellow, two straps of which tie behind her neck and leave the scooped neckline drawn tightly across the swell of her chest. He’s struck with the sudden urge to run his tongue across her collarbone while unknotting the silk kerchief that sits against her throat.

She must feel the weight of his gaze because she turns, mid-conversation with Kevin, and her face lights up at the sight of him.

Reggie Mantle could have walked up to punch him in the face right then and there, but Jughead wouldn’t have minded. He wants to get lost in her smile, the curl of her ponytail, the light floral scent of the perfume she’s started wearing; let his dad sit in jail and the Serpents run wild and the town burn down around them, it’ll all be alright if it’s just the two of them.

The bubble bursts ever so slightly when Fangs elbows his side and snorts, “You _are_ dating her, you’re allowed to say hi.”

But then she’s wrapped up in his arms in all her ethereal blonde glory and Jughead feels at peace again.

All he can manage is a raspy, “Hey you,” before Betty is kissing him soundly. When they break for air, she whispers against his lips, saying “I’m so glad you’re here,” and he is so lost he almost forgets their surroundings until Fangs wolf whistles. Jughead turns to see him joined once again by Toni and Sweet Pea.

For a moment, two sides of him are warring: one, childishly desperate to fit in, that thinks he shouldn’t act like such a lovesick puppy in front of them, knowing he’s only furthering their opinion of him as the Northside-wannabe; the other, the lovesick puppy, that doesn’t give a damn what they think, wanting to spend the uninterrupted evening with his hand glued to his girlfriend’s waist and distancing himself from whatever trouble the teen Serpents may cause.

Jughead finds himself at an impasse, choosing a middle ground where both sides lose. He pulls himself away from Betty, but wraps his hand around hers, and turns to the wall of leather-clad teens. “Toni, you’ve already met Betty. Betty, this is Fangs and Sweet Pea.”

Toni’s voice is sickly sweet when she says hello. “So nice of you to let us on your side of the tracks.” Flinching imperceptibly, Betty takes the jab in stride even if Jughead feels her hand tense on instinct, nails finding his skin instead of her own. He can’t tell if he wants to snap at Toni or divert his total attention to Betty. Offense or defense, South or North, friend or lover. 

It’s going to be a long goddamn night.

 

**

**

**

**

 

The ominous sense of déjà vu Betty gets when they walk into Reggie’s house is overwhelming. It reeks of beer and sweat and the bass reverberates so hard she can feel it in her toes.

Give her a crown-embroidered sweater and a birthday cake forgotten in the other room, and it may as well be a repeat of Juggie’s birthday. That certainly isn’t a night she wants replicated. But she’s here for Kevin and Veronica, and that means being here for them among the sticky kegs and the rowdy dancing and the distinct feeling of being slowly choked to death.

(Maybe she _does_ want a drink.)

Betty eyes the flask Veronica tips into a freshly cracked can of soda warily, but not without curiosity. Veronica always acts deliciously carefree and relaxed when she drinks and that’s a feeling so foreign to Betty she’s considering asking for a swig. Her friend eyes her right back, a sly grin crossing her lips—they’re a shade of pink closer to what Betty wears than the red stain she’s so used to seeing on her friend.

“Let’s start you on something easy, Little Miss Lightweight. No hard liquor for you just yet. If you’re not upright when your knight in shining denim appears, I shudder to think what fate awaits me.”

She allows herself to be dragged by the elbow in Veronica’s wake, desperately clutching to Kevin’s arm with her free hand. The party atmosphere is overwhelming but something about this particular sense of discomfort is welcoming; Betty is already so stressed by the emotional turmoil in her life that it’s a refreshing change to simply be stressed over a social situation.

That she is stressed by something most people her age find to be fun is an entirely separate beast. But Jughead will be there soon and no matter what the context, his presence melts away all her anxiety.

(It _had_ been fun to let Veronica and Kevin play stylist for her, to blast loud pop music and eat high calorie snacks while doing her makeup, to look in the mirror and be satisfied—if not a little impressed—with how she looked. Flipping through dress after dress in Veronica’s closet and listening to Veronica regale them with tales of her glamorous Manhattan days was such a welcome distraction from their daily, traumatic lives that it made her giddy. Veronica’s old life makes for great stories, regardless of whether Betty finds it hard to believe that the girl who dumped bubble bath into the school swimming pool is the same one who ran off to comfort Cheryl after knowing her for mere days, or who held Archie’s hand while silently crying through Fred Andrews’ funeral.)

It’s not long before the few sips of her beer have settled into a warm, pleasant feeling that Betty feels down to her toes. She still has eyes peeled for Jughead, searching for the trademark gray knit crown points over the tops of everybody’s heads.

Even so, Kevin locates him first.

Nudging her side, he nods his head across the kitchen where Jughead is in conversation with someone she assumes is another teen Serpent. She’d be more unsettled by the fact that he brought Serpents with him if not for the look of sheer delight in Jughead’s eyes upon finding hers that sets the warm beer buzz ablaze in every inch of her body.

The eyeroll is evident is his voice as Kevin mutters into her ear. “When did you two start looking at each other like you want to tear your clothes off instead of the usual _you hung the moon_ nonsense?”

Betty is too happy to censor her response. “Probably around the same time we said I love you to each other.”

Kevin’s hand squeezes Betty’s arm in surprise. “Really? Mr. _I’m Weird, I’m a Weirdo_ , said ‘I love you’?”

“And I said I loved him back.” With that, Betty practically flies across the room to crash into Jughead’s arms, doing her best to pour another _I love you_ into the kiss she gives him.

She is so overcome with feeling that she lets the Cooper Propriety go right out the window and allows herself to ignore the thumping bass, the shouts from games of beer pong, the boy in embroidered leather next to them, and every single one of their circumstances. It’s just his arms around her, their mingled breath; it’s only Betty and Jughead, and nothing else.

Toni’s pointed jab brings Betty crashing back to earth, feeling plain and unimpressive in the yellow silk dress she’s been so proud of mere hours before. Sensing danger, Kevin joins them at Betty’s side and the powder blue of his suit makes her feel less lost against the dark leather.

(Betty doesn’t think she can ever admit how grateful she is that Jughead is in one of his regular jackets, the worn denim pressed against her bare arm as comforting as a lullaby.)

The one Jughead introduced as Fangs— _Fangs._ The nicknames don’t make her feel much better about all this.—gives the pair of them an appreciative once-over. “You guys look great,” he smiles goodnaturedly. “I’m glad at least a few people chose decades outside of the eighties.”

“It was hard to resist this dress once I found it,” Betty admits. “We styled around it. Kevin already owns this suit, though, so he didn’t even have to try.”

“Nice, Kevin. Very nice.” Fangs grins and glances over Kevin again. Betty is happy to see the sly smile on her friend’s face, hoping the night goes better for him than he anticipated.

The tall one named Sweet Pea claps his friend on the shoulder and mutters, “We’re on the north side, man, keep it in your pants.”

Fangs rolls his eyes and Betty finds herself warming to him in particular. Even if Toni and Sweet Pea are going to openly insult her, at least Jughead’s made a friend that’s somewhat open-minded. “Don’t be a jackass, Sweets. Kill ‘em with kindness, y’know?”

Sweet Pea has the decency to look sheepish. “Yeah, yeah, sorry. Nice to meet you guys,” he nods to Betty and Kevin. “Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a game of beer pong against some drunk jocks that’s calling my name. Come on, Fogarty, let’s go take these bulldogs for a ride.”

When they disappear, Kevin follows with an exaggerated wink to Betty, so it’s just Betty left with Jughead and Toni.  

(Betty elects to pretend Toni isn’t there.)

“So, no costume, Juggie?” Betty teases, turning her full attention to him. “Better not let Veronica catch you, she’s got enough in her purse to try to accessorize you.”

Jughead’s mouth is open to joke back, but Cheryl sweeps into their circle in a flash of white silk. She’s wearing a dress that makes her look like she just walked off the silver screen, long skirt just reaching the bottom of her impossibly high metallic heels and billowing sleeves that give her an ethereal aura.

“Oh, cousin Betty, why would our favorite hobo ever need to dress up for a decades party when his entire wardrobe is permanently stuck in 1993?” Cheryl plucks the plastic cup from Betty’s hand, sniffs it with disdain, and reaches within the bust of her dress to pull out a miniature bottle. “Here, darling, this is much more appropriate than keg swill. Ta-ta!”

Jughead scoffs and stares at her retreating back. “She never ceases to baffle me.” 

Beside him, Toni looks as though she’s torn between awe and disgust. “Who the hell was _that?”_  

“Cheryl Blossom,” answer Betty and Jughead in unison. Jughead continues, “Trust me, you do not want to go near her with a ten foot pole, let alone with a snake on your back.”

“She needs to get that stick out of her ass first, but she is definitely easy on the eyes.” Toni’s expression is hard to read, but Betty is just glad her focus is anywhere besides on her.  

And then they’re alone. Jughead wraps an arm around her waist, pulling her to him and pressing a kiss against her temple. “You look beautiful, Betts.”

Betty smiles, but is distracted by the bottle Cheryl placed in her palm. She turns it over to read the label— _Mysterium Gin: Unlock the Mystery of your Delight._

 

**

**

**

**

 

Not that Cheryl has once in her life needed an excuse to dress to the nines, but a good old fashioned kegger—with a _theme_ , no less—feels as good a reason any to rescue one of the finer gowns she’d surreptitiously smuggled out of Thornhill from its confines.

If things hadn’t been flipped on their head, this party would be an excellent opportunity to flex her high school bitch muscles and frighten some freshmen, or even go toe to toe with Veronica about Vixen matters.

(She had, naturally, packed her uniform in her getaway bag. But a daughter whose father murdered his son and then committed suicide, and whose mother just nearly died when their house burned down cannot simply pick back up her cheer captain duties. A daughter in those circumstances, however, can certainly get dolled up and drink too much gin at a house party while wearing one of her grandmother’s vintage silk gowns.)

Perhaps picking a fight with Alice Cooper and threatening to rebuff her hospitality wasn’t her best move, if only because it puts her on tenterhooks with both Betty _and_ Veronica.

They seem to be the only ones left—possibly the only ones _ever—_ to have an ounce of genuine care for her. Betty Cooper, eternal people pleaser, should be easy enough to win back over. She blazes through the ragtag gang her cousin has taken up with, pausing just long enough to gift Betty a more suitable drink than the best beer Reggie Mantle’s allowance can buy.

Perhaps she glances over her shoulder to lock eyes with the petite pink-haired girl in the deliciously tight skirt, but who’s to say. She didn’t see clearly, but Cheryl has an inkling that the girl’s leather jacket has a vibrant green patch sewn onto the back of it. And though she would rather die than be found swimming with the snakes, perhaps a bit of vindictive repartee with a pretty piece of south side trash is just the kind of morale booster Cheryl needs.

The bass on the speakers is dialed up high enough that the beat makes the very ends of her red curls shake slightly. Another nip of gin pulled from the band of her bra goes down quickly, and she’s feeling charitable enough to perch delicately on the edge of a faux leather couch to engage in trivial drunk conversation with her supposed peers.

Josie breaks off mid-conversation with Reggie, Moose, and Midge to compliment Cheryl’s dress. The songstress herself looks phenomenal in a glimmering royal blue drop-waist dress, completing her look with a sequined headband and stocking feet in the lap of her very own Gatsby.

“You’re a vision, Josie,” Cheryl says in return. With a pointed raise of her eyebrow, Cheryl clinks her empty bottle again Josie’s cup before glancing at her feet on the suit-clad thigh of one Reggie Mantle. If not for his loosened tie, he would look every bit the part, from the neatly slicked hair down to the wing tipped shoes she’s sure came from Mr. Mantle’s closet.

(Reggie looks passably attractive on a good day, except for the fact that the child positively _lives_ in his letterman and sneakers. He loves a good party, but Cheryl has to assume Josie had a little something to do with this particular theme. Kudos to her.)

The conversation is far too tame for her liking; Midge and Josie are chattering away about the ever-rotating cast of hookups among their grade, Moose seems too distracted looking for someone in the crowd that is _not_ his girlfriend, and Reggie chimes in occasionally in with whatever locker room gossip is relevant.

The gin becomes too much when the two couples before her, both touching in casually intimate ways—Moose’s hand fiddling with the strap of Midge’s dress and Josie edging closer and closer to sitting directly on Reggie’s lap—cause somewhat of an ache to form in Cheryl’s chest.

When was the last time someone touched her like that, let alone held her?

She needs another drink. 

Cheryl’s abrupt move to standing sets off a chain reaction, Moose following suit. “Actually, Reg, we may head out soon. I’ve got my cash on me now if that works.”

Subtle as a brick to the forehead, the two boys trade a wad of twenties for a few small baggies of weed. Josie rolls her eyes but Midge smiles and roots around in her purse. “I just got a new piece we’re gonna try out if you want to join,” she whispers conspiratorially as though a couple dime bags of weed are some big secret.

As though Cheryl’s father hadn’t just been running the biggest drug ring in the state. As though her brother hadn’t just been killed for it.

So Cheryl ignores her and directs her attention to Reggie, who looks considerably more drunk than he had when she’d first sat down. “Reginald, since when do you deal?”

“Only the herbals, Cherry Bomb, don’t you worry. My guy over in Greendale offered me the gig so he’d stop having to make the drive so often. I only ever saw him for the ganj and some finals week Ritalin, but the dude runs a serious game around all the schools. Pretty sure his supplier’s got the whole shebang.” His pretty-boy grin isn’t as charming as usual in this moment. “I’m intrigued for sure. But while the Reg-man is about many, many things, he is not about anything that requires consumption by needle.”

Just the thought has Cheryl’s skin crawling. She wants out of this house and this dress and this town. She wants Jason to hug her and tell her it’ll be okay. 

But her options are limited. She settles for pulling Josie up by the hand and in the direction of the makeshift dance floor.

“Let’s go dance our asses off like there’s no tomorrow.”

 

**

**

**

**

 

The night is crisp when Betty shrugs her coat back on and exits the Mantle home, to Veronica’s whines and Jughead’s immense relief. He humored her with only minimal complaint, though, for which Betty is grateful. She hugs him to her in silent appreciation as the darkened street envelops them.

For as much as he may moan and groan, Betty thinks Jughead needs nights like this every once in a while. To see that the world doesn’t implode when he’s social, that he’s not the moody wallflower all the time, that people like to have him around. That _she_ likes to have him around.

“Thanks again for coming out tonight, Jug.”

“I do believe you still owe me the milkshake portion of this agreement, Betty.” He grins ruefully at her and his eyes sparkle a little in the light of the sky and street lamps. “And I won’t say _any time_ to your thanks because you only get to cash in the high school party card twice a year, but you know I’ll do pretty much anything if you ask me.” Jughead pauses in the middle of the sidewalk to pull her to him in a tight embrace, kissing her hard until they’re gasping into each other’s mouths and his hands are ghosting up her sides.

“I love you,” Betty whispers into the night. Because she _does_ and he loves her back and they get to say it out loud to each other whenever they want.

They hold onto to each other tightly for the rest of the walk to Elm Street, staying closer than the cold night explicitly calls for but not quite close enough for what they both seem to need. But when Jughead kisses her goodnight at her front door, Betty feels content—if not something close to happy—with the evening. Things are starting to feel okay.

 

**

 

Betty brushes her teeth and climbs into bed with a smile. She’ll dream of Polly and the babies, of Jughead holding her hand, of Jughead pulling at the ties of her yellow party dress and kissing down her throat, of their childhood walks with Archie and Vegas as a puppy. She’ll have her first night of peaceful sleep in weeks, completely unaware of the chaos happening across town in a side road down by the woods.

Buzzed and high, Moose and Midge are giggling to each other and debating whether they should make the effort to climb into the back seat or to just go at it in the driver's seat.

Unbeknownst to all, a man with a 9mm handgun creeps up behind Moose’s beat up ‘06 Toyota, poised to strike.  

  

**

**

**

**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _dun, dun, DUNNN_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> as always, please please let us know if you read & enjoyed! we always love to hear what you think! 
> 
> recommended listening, a la Reggie's decades party playlist  
> 01\. Money Honey, Elvis Presley (50s)  
> 02\. Sugar Sugar, The Archies (60s)  
> 03\. Highway to Hell, AC/DC (70s)  
> 04\. Come On Eileen, Dexys Midnight Runners (80s)  
> 05\. Just a Girl, No Doubt (90s)  
> 06\. Dance Hall Drug, Boys Like Girls (00s)


	5. poor little rich girl

 

Nana Rose’s hair is set perfectly. A thin streak of dying light flickers through the dusty blinds at the bus station and glints against the lone remaining curl of red. Her good eye peers around the waiting area, vibrating slightly with the _clack-clack_ of the breeze through the metal window coverings, its hazel intensity revealing the truer, sharper nature that her grandmother’s overall appearance, spacey and clouded as it typically is, would normally hide.

Cheryl has spent years developing a strong feeling of ambivalence toward Nana Rose. At worst, she’d been a non-intervening bystander as her parents waged war against their own children. At best, she’d provided limited support to Jason and Polly’s quest for freedom in the form of her own jewelry. For many years, Cheryl was unable to determine Nana Rose’s specific allegiance with precise certainty. Was she an agent of her son’s, ominous and slick, overseeing the family’s operations from the throne of an exquisite handcrafted wooden wheelchair, waiting to fill in the gaps wherever Clifford would surely fail? Or was she simply an old woman whose agency and mind had gone years ago, faded alongside the legacy of her husband, clinging precariously to life through the sheer might of stubborn genetics and expensive medications?

Or, wilder still, Cheryl used to think - perhaps she was _neither._ She remembers being a child, seated on the dark wooden floors of Thornhill, playing with the edge of her cotton dress and staring at the emptiness of her grandmother’s bad eye, wondering if perhaps she was something else, once upon a time. Something other than a demanding, haunting old woman, like a princess or even a warrior, someone who would place the first footprint into the sands of the rebellion or strike the match to light the world on fire.

Cheryl still isn’t totally sure where her grandmother stands, but even if the second is most likely, she’s always liked that third invented image of her grandmother the best. It’s more exciting and dramatic and certainly less depressing than the reality of her everyday existence - spending the days sitting in the dark corners of an impossible mansion or, nearly worse, upstate at the uncanny valley’s pastoral retreat - and it carries with it a somewhat cinematic air, perfect for the kind of quietly chaotic tension that Cheryl has always craved in the family theatre.

_Family._

The word has always felt uncomfortable on Cheryl’s tongue - too heavy and too empty at the same time, she thinks, too dark and too light, too everything and nothing. And now, surely, _nothing_ is what she has. Her father and brother, dead; her mother, now a ward of the state’s medical system, however temporary. She’d had the Coopers, albeit briefly and reluctantly, but that had had a countdown to expiration on it with an alarm so loud that Cheryl would bet not even Riverdale’s sweetheart Betty Cooper could deny the sound, one that realistically had little to do with the return of her hopefully-healed grandmother from the uncanny valley and everything to do with the fact that Alice Cooper is a controlling, demanding woman with _just enough_ unpredictability to make even Cheryl feel uncomfortable.

The fact that Betty hasn’t gone completely crazy in that house - crazier than she already is, obviously - is, Cheryl now believes, almost something worth respecting. One day, she muses, newfound cousin Betty might be worthy of something akin to a friendship - or at least an alliance, against weak men and insane mothers.

But for now she has Nana Rose, whose sanity (while questionable) is at least of the kind that lends itself to Cheryl’s advantage. As an adult with a more direct familial relationship than Hal Cooper, Nana Rose’s return to Riverdale means that she is now eligible to be Cheryl’s legal guardian while her wretched mother is incapacitated, so Cheryl has spent the last day gathering her possessions from the Coopers’ home under Alice's evil eye and carefully placing them in her vintage Louis. The suitcase itself is resting in the trunk of her convertible, which is parked in the lot of the bus station with its retractable roof loyally up to protect from the cooling air, ready to take her and Nana to greener pastures.

“Hello dearest grandmother,” Cheryl greets, stepping toward where her grandmother sits, her own vintage suitcase resting on the ground beside her wheelchair. She leans down and drops air kisses beside her cheeks, then straightens up and remarks, “Kind of you to finally return.”

Nana Rose fixes her with a peculiar yet familiar stare. “Kind of _me?”_ she echoes. “I had to take a _bus_ from the _hospital,_ Cheryl. You’re lucky that I have friends upstate willing to help or we’d be out of a place to stay as well.”

Cheryl rolls her eyes and walks to stand behind the wheelchair, the click of her heels echoing around the cavernous station. She lifts Nana’s suitcase onto her lap and then begins to push her grandmother toward the doors, where her car awaits. “Where _are_ we going anyway, grand-mama? Perhaps a little flat at the Pembrooke? The Lodges have the penthouse, but there _must_ be a quaint two-bedroom a bit lower down.”

The corner of Nana Rose’s mouth pulls slightly. The look that she gives Cheryl is almost pitying. “No, Cheryl. I have a small amount squirreled away, but it’s not enough to pay for the Pembrooke.”

 _Of course._ They’re going to end up at some second-rate version instead like the Emory, two blocks south. There aren’t even _views_ at the Emory. Or - god _forbid,_ they’ll have to stay in a house in the same neighbourhood as the Coopers; after all, the Andrews residence is vacant now.

“Well, where then?” Cheryl snaps impatiently, glaring her thanks to the man who holds the door of the bus station open for her and somewhat unceremoniously shoving Nana Rose’s wheelchair through it. “I have all my worldly possessions in the trunk of my car, Nana. They cannot _possibly_ stay there.”

“Many of _my_ worldly possessions went up in flames,” Nana Rose retorts, craning her neck to peer at Cheryl. “But I doubt whoever caused that fire was planning even one step ahead of that act, or indeed, thinking of anyone but himself.” She folds her hands and turns away again, her cloudy eye now out of Cheryl’s sight, and adds, “Or herself.”

Cheryl swallows but grits her teeth, succeeding (barely) to maintain a steely gaze. She arrives at her convertible, deposits Nana at the side of it, and begins the process of helping her grandmother into the passenger seat. “I agree, Nana dearest,” she says, averting her eyes as she speaks. “What a truly selfish, heinous act.”

At Nana’s direction, they begin to drive south. Cheryl glances out the window at the passing houses.  They start off large (there are none with the grandeur of Thornhill, obviously, or even that of Thistle House, but the homes seem passably livable, at least) and grow slightly smaller as the streets pass. The roofs lower, the shingles curl, the siding cracks and peels, and colour begins slowly to disappear. The streets get dirtier somehow, and the people shabbier, but still Cheryl clings to a hope of some secret luxury despite the sure inevitability of their destination until finally, Nana gives her a direction to turn to the right, and Cheryl’s stomach drops.

The sign is filthy, the metallic sun and words faded, as they always have been every time she’s ever fallen so far as to set eyes on it, but the red letters are unmistakable all the same. _Sunnyside Trailer Park. Low rates. No pets. Swimming pool._

An empty beer can sits just below it, caved in on the side, as if someone has stepped on it and tossed it aside on their way out of the park. _Disgusting cretins,_ Cheryl thinks, before pulling her car up alongside the sign and placing it in park.

“You cannot _possibly_ be serious.” She can hear the desperation straining in her own voice, but cares perilously little about disguising it.

 _You’re slipping, Cheryl,_ she tells herself.

Nana Rose leaves her gaze pointed forward, her jaw set. “I can phone Alice Cooper and see if she has room for two, if you’d prefer.”

“I’d rather sleep in the barn with Daddy’s hanging corpse,” Cheryl snaps. For a moment, she sees herself back on the frozen river, her feet touching the ice, her eyes unfixed in the general direction of Archie Andrews, and wishes to be back there, to do it all again, to escape that moment and this moment and all of the moments that are sure to come.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees her dear cousin Betty’s dirty boyfriend, Jughead Hobo the Third, tear out of the door of a trailer and hop hurriedly onto a motorcycle. Her eyes follow him as he approaches the entrance, passing by her on his way out, but he doesn’t look over.

Cheryl drops her head backward onto the headrest and slides her palms up her cheeks until her fingertips can press into her temples. _Time for damage control,_ she tells herself. This is not the Blossom way. This is not _her_ way. Not anymore. She is a phoenix. She has risen from the ashes. They are just clinging to her beautiful tail feathers, sure to shake soon.

“I have an old vehicle in the back garage near Thornhill,” Nana Rose states, her voice both resolute and almost sad at the same time. “My lawyers assure me it’s undamaged. You can drive it for the time being.”

Cheryl whips her head up. “What’s wrong with my car?”

“We’ll need the cash.” She draws a weakened hand carefully onto the other, the tips of her fingers touching the wedding ring along her third finger. “We both need to make sacrifices, Cheryl, at least until your father’s estate has been managed.”

Protest bubbles at Cheryl’s throat, but she keeps her lips sealed. There was a goal to all this, she reminds herself wistfully. She wanted to be free. _Jason_ wanted to be free, and he gave his life for it. The least that she can do is live hers with as much of that as she can get. _Yes._ This is just a speed bump, Cheryl decides. A speed bump that’s dirty and filled with poor people, but a speed bump nonetheless.

“I suppose I can’t park my convertible at this dump anyway. Not with the _hoodlums.”_

That earns her a vaguely relieved look from Nana Rose, and Cheryl puts the car in drive again.

“Which of these rotten tin cans is ours?”

 

** 

 

**

 

**

 

**

 

Kevin thinks he knows how it’s supposed to unfold.

After all, he’s seen a lot of movies. A _lot._ There’s always one or more of the following: a phone call, a horror-stricken face, a dropped receiver, an audible gasp. Tears, on occasion. Manicured fingernails scraping against cheeks as hands fly to the face. Then, a mad dash, the screeching of tires against the asphalt of a parking lot, the flurry of feet during a run to the main doors, a frantic inquiry to a harried, tired nurse, and finally, the dig of plastic against the spine as the subject slouches in the hard chair of a hospital waiting room, desperate for news.

Kevin expects all of this to happen. (Minus the fingernails - although he _does_ keep them neat and clean, which is unfortunately more than he can say for the majority of the male population of Riverdale.)

It doesn’t.

He _is_ at home when he finds out, and there _is_ a phone call, but it comes to his father’s cell phone. Kevin hears one end of it - his father’s expressive _“Fuck”,_ then inquiries and some mention of the woods, until finally “I’ll go straight to the scene, send a deputy to the hospital”, and then it’s over.

Kevin’s father - _Sheriff_ Keller, he reminds himself, since there’s that look in his father’s eye now, the working one, he one that means he’s put his metaphorical law enforcement hat back on - stands immediately from his position seated on the couch and grimaces. Kevin straightens his back, deeply acquainted with this routine by now; something has happened. “Son, I have to go in."

“What happened?” Kevin asks automatically.

“Another shooting.” Sheriff Keller grimaces, runs a hand through his hair, then opens his mouth to speak again before apparently thinking better of it and hesitating, as if unsure whether to continue.

Kevin frowns. “Where?”

Sheriff Keller shakes his head. “Doesn’t - Kev, look, this time it was - well, it sounds like it’s two kids from your high school.”

His immediate thought is of Betty, kind and sweet but determined, too determined for her own good, and his stomach drops. He clears his throat, trying to rid himself of the lump that’s already begun to form, and asks, “Who?”

His father’s expression is one of sadness, even as he’s grabbing the discarded uniform shirt from its place on a nearby armchair, where it’s laid since he’d shrugged it off after a long day of no progress on the murderer haunting his town. “They were taken to the hospital, Kev. They’re alive, so far -”

“Dad,” Kevin interrupts, shaking his head. _“Who?”_

When his father utters their names - _it was Midge Klump, son, and that football player you were friends with, the Mason boy -_ the lump from his throat seals it off, and he stops breathing.

Somehow, the oxygen returns to his lungs. They have one car, having sold his mother’s when she was stationed overseas, so Kevin asks his father for a ride to the hospital on his way to the scene.

The _crime_ scene, the place where -

“Alright, son,” comes the interruption, accompanied by a kind, almost knowing expression, as though his father’s in on some type of secret that Kevin _knows_ he is most assuredly not.

Kevin follows his father into the garage, grabbing a sweater along the way to hide the white undershirt he’d slept in. He sits quietly for the short drive, the silence punctuated only by the crackle of the police radio and his own memories of doing this drive, mere weeks earlier, for Archie.

He climbs out of the car by the emergency doors, realizing only after his father’s peeled away that he doesn’t actually know where to go or what to do. When it had been Fred, there was Archie to focus on - coffee to fetch, kleenex to grab - and ultimately arrangements to help with, theoretically, or at least moral support to be given. A shoulder to cry on, if needed, in the unlikely and ultimately unneeded event that the combined efforts of Veronica, Jughead, and Betty, all closer to Archie than he, failed.

Kevin walks through the doors anyway, letting his feet carry him on instinct to reception at the front. His hands curl around the worn edges of the desk, and he doesn’t wait for the tired nurse to look up before he breathes, “I’m looking for information on -”

“Kevin, right?”

He turns around, leaving the now-expectant and annoyed nurse staring at him, and sees a woman that he identifies from years of shared elementary school activities as Moose’s mother looking at him from her place on a chair. A man that Kevin assumes to be Moose’s father has his arm around her.

They look frantic, worried, emotionally overwhelmed - but not broken.

He hopes that’s a good thing.

“Yes Mrs. Mason,” Kevin says, rubbing his hands on his jeans before going over to them.

Moose’s father peers up at him with vague recollection in his eyes, an expression that Kevin has seen on many faces; he is, after all, the son of not only the sheriff but also the town’s war hero. He thinks that’d probably be enough to explain why most people in Riverdale know who he is, but he’s also one of the only _openly_ gay residents, and he’s not naive enough to think that that hasn’t contributed as well.

“How - how are they?” he asks the Masons, repressing the desire to say _him,_ as though Midge doesn’t matter. She does, of course, and Kevin genuinely likes her, but Moose is his - _was_ \- someone special to him once, unbeknownst to nearly everyone except Betty. It had ended between them as quietly as it began, at which point Moose had begun to date Midge and Kevin had moved on, too, but Moose was still at least evidence to Kevin that there was somebody else like him in this godforsaken town.

(Other than heartbreaking gang members of dubious age and moral character, obviously.)

“They’re in critical condition,” Mrs. Mason says, nodding her head slowly as if the positive assertion itself is a contribution. She dabs at her eyes with a tissue and leans slightly into her husband’s comforting arm. “Shot at close range, it’s a miracle they made it here.”

Kevin swallows the lump in his throat and mirrors Mrs. Mason’s nod. “That’s good, that’s - he’s a fighter,” he offers somewhat lamely, wincing internally at himself. _A fighter,_ honestly, there’s gotta be something better than that, he thinks.

Moose’s father squeezes his wife’s shoulder. “He is,” he confirms. “Thank you for coming, son.”

“Of course,” Kevin replies automatically, sitting down. “Moose is - a friend, and I have math with Midge.”

“Her parents are on their way,” Mrs. Mason informs him tiredly. “They were in Greendale for the weekend.”

Kevin nods again. “That’s … good.”

He chews his bottom lip through the silence that follows, letting his eyes fall across the spartan walls of the waiting room, its bland grey-beige colour interrupted every so often by a workplace safety poster or a notice proclaiming all visitors to use the disinfectant hand sanitizer offered nearby. He hates this feeling, this helplessness; he wants to do something, say something, _anything,_ to lift the concern and the tension.

“I should call Betty,” he suddenly realizes aloud. “She’s on cheer with Midge. And some of the guys from the football team. They’ll … they’d want to be here.”

Mrs. Mason gives a nod of acknowledgement, and immediately Kevin rises from the chair, grateful for a task. He slips his phone out of his pocket and dials Betty’s number as he lets his feet take him through the hospital doors and out onto the sidewalk. She’ll know what to do after this, Kevin thinks; Betty _always_ knows what to do.

 

**

 

**

 

(Across town, Betty sits at her parents’ kitchen table, staring morosely at a glass of orange juice and wishing that she didn’t have a headache.

Her phone buzzes on the table beside her. She yanks it off quickly, ignoring the annoyed look that her mother gives her, and smiles at the name on her caller ID.

She slides her thumb across the front and pushes back from the table. “Hey Kev,” she answers. “What’s up?”)

 

**

 

**

 

An hour passes and the waiting room at the hospital fills. Jughead arrives first, having been contacted by Betty, who walks in not long afterward with a swish of her blonde ponytail and a Tupperware container full of chocolate chip cookies. Kevin greets her with a grateful hug and takes her to meet the Masons and the Klumps, who have also arrived. He watches as she interacts with them almost expertly, placing a hand on Mrs. Mason’s shoulder and giving Mrs. Klump a hug, and marvels at her ability to know precisely where the line is with each woman. She offers her prayers and a cookie, then sends a remarkably obedient Jughead to retrieve coffee for Midge’s father.

“I’m glad you’re here, Betty,” Kevin mutters to her, hearing the relief in his own voice.

Betty pats his back. “It’s okay, Kev,” she says softly.

Kevin chews his bottom lip again. “Is this where you tell me he’s going to be alright?”

The colour washes out of Betty’s face for a brief moment, and she shakes her head darkly. “No,” she replies. “But we’ll be here for each other and for their parents either way.”

He nods, gives her a one-armed hug, then goes to the doors to wave the newly arriving Reggie and a few of the other members of the football team toward the rapidly-depleting empty chairs. He’s had neither good nor bad experiences with Reggie; his tendency toward bullying had surprisingly never been targeted toward the only gay kid in school, but rather at guys like Jughead and Dilton. Kevin still doesn’t like him much, but the panicked look in Reggie’s eyes is enough to make him instantly feel for him. Moose is one of his friends, Kevin knows; they play football together, hang out together, party together. They know him differently, but they both _care,_ and today that’s what matters.

“No news,” Kevin informs him once he and the other players have sat down. “And they haven’t woken up yet.”

Reggie sighs heavily and rubs the back of his neck. “How did they even find Moose and Midge, if they haven’t woken up yet?”

“A gunshot is pretty loud,” Jughead offers. He’s immediately elbowed in the side by Betty, who gestures in the general direction of Moose and Midge’s parents. Jughead mouths a near-reverent “sorry” at her, then slides his arm around her waist.

Kevin watches the interaction with interest. It’s no longer new, but it’s still fascinating to him to see Jughead be publicly affectionate with anyone, let alone Betty. He’d thought for years that Betty would eventually end up with Archie - it _had_ seemed preordained, in a classic sort of small-town sweethearts kind of way - and while the Jughead thing is as far from that as she could probably get, it makes sense. They’re good together, Kevin thinks, even if the motorcycle Jughead rode in on does make him slightly concerned.

“Actually, someone camping nearby last night heard it,” he says. “My dad called earlier. That’s who found them. He said the same guy apparently saw a man leaving the scene. Similar description to the suspect for … Fred.”

(There’s no _good_ way to say his name, his friend’s dead father’s name, no way to state the obvious without actually doing so, no way to make reference without reliving all of that, especially not right now. Not _here.)_

“Are you fucking serious?” Reggie says, his voice raised enough to make a woman across the room raise her head in surprise. “Are you saying the same guy that shot Andrews’s dad shot Moose and Midge?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Fuck.” Reggie slams his fist into the plastic of the chair beside his knee and stands up, his body rigid with anger. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. If Keller had done his goddamn job right the first time, this wouldn’t have -”

“Stop, Reggie,” Betty interrupts sternly.

Reggie glares at her. “Don’t tell me to do anything, Cooper. Am I wrong? Is Keller not the worst sheriff this town has ever had?”

Kevin winces at that accusation. He wants to jump in and defend his father - he _should,_ he thinks, it’s his _father -_ but his body feels frozen, and he doesn’t.

“Maybe if he got his head out of his own ass -”

Betty interrupts again, _good old Betty,_ Kevin thinks, she of bravery and stubbornness and blonde ponytails, a true warrior for the times, and while they’re arguing he lets his mind wander. His gaze falls upon the doors to the trauma centre and the sign that crosses them, with its big black letters that spell out _STAFF ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT,_ and his heart feels tired.

Beside him, Betty is still arguing with Reggie. He feels a rush of gratitude for her, followed by a slight but immediate ache in his chest, because no matter how hard she tries, she’ll never get it. Not _really._

(Moose would get it.)

 _He’ll be okay,_ he tells himself. He has to be. He’s not prepared to lose Joaquin _and_ Moose in the same month.

When he breaks his own reverie, he hears the tail end of Betty and Reggie’s repressively quiet conversation (a relenting “Okay, Cooper, _fine”),_ then looks over to Veronica. She’d arrived fifteen minutes earlier, dressed to the nines per usual in heels and pearls and a skirt that Kevin recognizes vaguely as being from Burberry’s fall collection last year, but she’s been quiet. He lets Jughead deal with a still-heated Betty and walks over to sit next to Veronica.

“I think I should call Archie and tell him,” Veronica says as soon as he sits down.

 _Archie._ Kevin had almost forgotten about him, even though his absence has been only brief so far. But of _course,_ Archie: the son of the last victim of this killer, if it is indeed the same person, now miles away in the apparent safety of his mother’s care in Chicago. And here, left behind, is Veronica.

“Oh,” Kevin says in response, offering her a hug. When she accepts it gratefully, leaning into him with a surprisingly distraught look on her face, he realizes that maybe everyone else is going through something, too.

 

**

 

**

 

**

 

**

 

Absence, Veronica has always been told, makes the heart grow fonder.

If that’s true, as she’s always assumed, her heart should now be bursting with fondness. Overwhelmed with love, unsustainably enamoured, or something. Archie has been gone for what seems to be months and hours all at once. Sometimes it feels like he’s on another vacation, a short trip to see his mother in the Windy City, and still other times there’s a part of Veronica that feels like he was never here to begin with.

But on a day like today, a simple autumn Sunday, she feels his absence. It’s chilly when she wakes up, and while they’d obviously not spent that many full nights together given the existence of her parents, Veronica still finds herself wishing for the strength of his arms wrapped around her and the warmth of his chest at her back. She’s never been a cuddly person temperamentally, but there’s something innately comforting about body heat and muscles and size and the feeling of safety that’s elicited, a feeling that she’s been missing since Archie’s departure.

Later, when she gets a call from Betty about Moose and Midge, Veronica feels his presence, too. He’s there in the waiting room with their friends’ parents, sitting and wondering; he’s there with his football teammates, leaning and being leaned on; and he’s there when she sinks into a plastic chair, until suddenly he’s not, and the only thing she’s left with is the faint scent of Kevin Keller’s day-old cologne and the same old familiar hole in her heart.

Her thumb hovers over the _send_ button on her iPhone screen for a moment before she pulls it away. The message - a simple explanation to Archie of what’s happened with Moose and Midge - glares at her accusingly. She should send it, she knows that, but something is stopping her. It’s as though there’s a string tied to her finger, and every time she moves to press down, it tugs upward.

 _Fitting,_ she thinks morosely. Try as she might to dance without the strings, she’s still always just a marionnette.

Kevin nudges her with his shoulder. She’s not quite sure how long they’ve been sitting in silence. “I’m going to get a coffee from the cafeteria. I can’t sit here anymore. Do you want anything?”

“Decaf non-fat latte,” Veronica responds automatically. At the look on Kevin’s face, she amends her order. “Regular coffee is also fine. Whatever they have.”

“Can do.” He stands, places a hesitant hand on her shoulder, and squeezes it gently before adding, “I think he’d probably rather hear it from you than the news, for what it’s worth.”

Veronica stares at him, bites her lip, and nods. Kevin seems satisfied with that and walks away, his hand already digging into his pocket for his wallet. She watches him go for a few moments before turning her attention back to her phone.

There’s a new message on it. She knows without even checking the name that it’s from her mother. _Mija,_ it reads, _are you okay?_

Veronica abandons her message to Archie to her drafts, types out a quick _yes_ in response to her mother, and has just clicked _send_ when the hurricane that is Cheryl Blossom barrels through the ER doors.

Veronica stands immediately, knowing that Cheryl is, at the best of times, somewhat unpredictable. She takes a step out of her own misery and confusion for the time being and approaches her, partially to speak to her frenemy and provide updates, and partially so that Midge and Moose’s parents don’t have to interact with her. She can only imagine that it’s bound to be a less than comforting experience, which isn’t what they need right now.

“Cheryl,” Veronica says, stepping in her path. 

Cheryl’s eyes are wild and sad, and are surprisingly devoid of the typical high-chinned derision with which she seems to frequently to regard the rest of the world. “Midge,” she breathes, her voice catching. “Is -”

Midge, Veronica now remembers, is on Cheryl’s cheerleading squad, along with herself and Betty and a few of the other girls who have gathered now.

“They’re both alive,” Veronica tells her, the message quick and quiet as she places a hand on Cheryl’s back and leads her to an emptier corner of the waiting room. “Critical condition. No word yet on prognosis. But _alive,”_ she emphasizes again, guiding Cheryl to sit down on a chair.

She obeys the silent command, folds her hands on her lap, and then looks at Veronica, her eyes still wide. “I was at - I was picking up Nana, and Betty texted me.”

Veronica nods. “Seems like Kevin spread the word.”

For a moment, Cheryl looks as though she’d like to say something; most likely a rebuke of Sheriff Keller, Veronica would guess. To her credit, she seems to decide against it, and turns to stare at the floor.

They sit in silence for a few minutes. Cheryl’s back is warm under Veronica’s hand, even through the high-quality merino of of her turtleneck (Blossom red, of course; Veronica can respect the commitment to her brand). Veronica moves her hand slowly back and forth, hoping that the gesture is somewhat comforting, and then lets her gaze fall parallel to Cheryl’s.

“I feel like we’ve all been here a lot lately,” Cheryl suddenly comments.

Veronica looks over at her. Her eyes are wet now, but she’s not crying, not yet, and she has the curious suspicion that Cheryl probably won’t, because there’s a resolve in there too, somewhere, one that Veronica recognizes. Veronica moves her hand down to hold Cheryl’s, and squeezes tightly. This won’t be an excuse to slip away, not again, not like _that._

“How’s your mom?” Veronica asks.

Cheryl shrugs dismissively. “Nana’s back,” she replies instead.

“That’s good.”

Cheryl looks over at her. “We’re living in Sunnyside.”

Veronica’s jaw drops before she can stop herself. “What?”

“We can’t access any of Daddy’s money right now, and Nana doesn’t have a lot of her own that’s not caught up in that, so … we’re moving into a trailer in Sunnyside. Right across from _his_ place.” Cheryl nods her head in the direction of Jughead, who’s standing beside a worried-looking Betty, his arm around her. “At least his monster of a father is still in jail so I don’t have to see his face every day.”

The mention of FP Jones makes Veronica’s stomach tighten. She’s reminded of Jason, and of his death. She hadn’t known him, hadn’t known him and Cheryl as a unit, but it’s clear as day and without any question that they’d been one all the same.

The wetness in Cheryl’s eyes is threatening now to spill over, so Veronica lets go of Cheryl’s hand and offers her a tissue. “All of our fathers are bad men,” she says simply.

Cheryl accepts the tissue and dabs at her eyes delicately, clearly making a conscious effort not to smudge her makeup. It seems vain, on the surface: something terrible has happened, and it seems as though the last thing that should be a concern is the fidelity of one’s eye makeup, but Veronica understands. It’s more than the face that she shows to the world. It’s a mask.

“Except one.”

Veronica ducks her head with the shame of Fred’s memory now back in the forefront of her mind. “Yes,” she responds, scratching a fingernail against her knee.

The weight of Cheryl’s hand between her shoulder blades surprises Veronica, but she leans into the touch all the same. “How’s Archie?”

“I’ve been ignoring him,” Veronica confesses.

“Did his lack of personality finally catch up to him?”

Veronica rolls her eyes at Cheryl. “No. I just … it’s weird, without him here.”

“Like he’ll come back next week?”

“Yes,” Veronica admits. “Or like he was never here to begin with.”

Cheryl pats Veronica’s shoulder. “I feel that way about Jason sometimes. For so long, Jason was everything, and now things are so different. He wouldn’t recognize this town if he was back, suddenly.”

Veronica stares at a scuff mark on the patent toe of her heel and fights the urge to lean down and smudge it out. “I can’t tell if I’m ignoring Archie because I want to protect him from having to talk about Fred, and we _have_ to talk about Fred, or because our relationship feels … shaky. Like things are distant, but there’s more than just miles between us. And then sometimes still I feel like I’m just imagining all of it, and it’s shaky because I want it to be.”

Cheryl takes Veronica’s hand. “Do you want it to be?”

She shrugs, feeling more miserable now than before. “I don’t know what I want anymore.”

Silence falls again. Veronica stares around the waiting room, listening to the unintelligible din of the emergency room, filled as it is now primarily with students and friends and parents of Moose and Midge. She wonders who would show up if it had been her behind the clinical doors.

“At least you don’t have to live in a tin box, next to a bunch of vagrants,” Cheryl finally says, the lilt in her voice belying a hint of sarcasm.

That makes Veronica smile, and she squeezes Cheryl’s hand. “You’re welcome at the Pembrooke anytime.”

“Thank you,” Cheryl says softly. Their eyes meet, briefly, before the vibration of Veronica’s cell phone distracts her and she glances down at the new message.

 _The FBI are at the Pembrooke to interview your father,_ her mother has texted. _Don’t come home._

 

**

 

**

 

**

 

**

 

“Jughead, can I ask you a question?”

He raises his head from its resting place against the worn pillows that sit on his father’s equally-aged couch and peers down to where his feet are stretched across a delicately-set lap. Betty’s eyes, famously green and gorgeous and emotive (or at least _he_ thinks so), are fixed on him.

“Of course.”

“How do you still have this place?” she asks, gesturing around at the living room of his father’s trailer.

Jughead drops his head back down and looks at the ceiling. “I don’t know,” he says honestly. “Nobody’s taken it away from me yet.”

It’s the truth. He’s staying with the Topazes, and Thomas may be his temporary legal guardian, but home is still here, right down the cracked asphalt road. He’s expecting somebody to show up any day now and take the keys from him, but as time marches forward it is beginning to seem less and less likely. Jughead doesn’t want to question it, necessarily; he likes having access to home, even if he isn’t supposed to stay here, but it does seem fairly likely that his continued possession of the trailer has at least _something_ to do with the Serpents.

He wonders what he’ll end up owing, and whether it’ll be worth the exchange.

They’re here after a couple of fruitless hours spent in the waiting room at the hospital. At a certain point, no news about Moose and Midge became good news, and the number of people standing around began to taper off. Betty hadn’t wanted to leave at first, but Jughead could see the edges of stress on Mr. and Mrs. Klump’s faces, and he’d guided her out with the third wave of exits, promising to return if there was any change in their condition.

The attack on Moose and Midge is hard for him to process. After Jason, after his father, after _Fred,_ everything seems different. This isn’t the same town he’s known his whole life, not anymore. In a sort of strange, morbid sense, Jughead feels like _of course_ there’s some kind of serial attacker on the loose, and of course his best friend’s father had been one of the victims, and of course teenagers from his school would be next on the list. It’s depressing and defeatist and part of him hates it, but still another part of him feels like the _why not this too_ sentiment swirling around his head and heart is perhaps the most logical of responses that he could have.

The phone call he’d received from his mother fits nicely under that heading too, Jughead reminds to himself, because as much as he’s trying to forget that it ever happened, she’s always in a corner of his mind, lurking.

“I still can’t believe this happened,” Betty says softly, breaking the silence. “And to Moose and Midge, of all people.”

“You know, it’s ironic that my parents made such a big effort for me to stay in school on the north side,” Jughead muses. “After everything happened and we had to move here, all the pretending to make sure I could still register at the north side school - to have better resources, to be safer, and so far all the attacks have been on the north side.”

Hearing that thought cross his own lips makes Jughead sit up suddenly, and he pulls his feet from Betty’s lap. She looks at him, surprised.

“You can stay here, if you want,” he tells her.

Betty frowns at first, then gives a near-laugh and tilts her head. “Why?”

“To be safe.” He reaches out for her, and she shuffles closer to him on the couch. “I’m worried about you.” He grabs her outside hip with one arm and her legs with the other and pulls her even closer until she’s nearly sitting on him, then presses his lips to her shoulder. “I want you to be safe,” he repeats.

Betty reaches up and pulls his beanie off, smoothing his always-unruly hair down with her fingers. “I _am,”_ she assures him. Her smile tells him that she’s not taking his concern fully seriously, and while he fully believes that Betty is more than capable of taking care of herself, there’s still a part of him that needs - _wants,_ he corrects himself - to make sure that she’s okay.

He nods, but bites his tongue to remain quiet. Cheryl is gone now, he’d heard as much; Polly, too, seems strangely absent. So now it’s just Betty and her parents at home, and while Jughead doesn’t think her parents would ever do anything to put their children at risk, Alice specifically seems to have great difficulty in making allies.

“I’ll keep my eyes wide open,” Betty promises, kissing him softly. “Now tell me, what’s going on with you?”

Jughead looks away. “What do you mean?”

She pokes him and drags his chin back so he’s facing her once more. “You’ve been quiet, and I don’t think it’s just about Moose and Midge.”

Jughead sighs. He loves her so much, this girl, but he’s beginning to think that he hadn’t considered the idea that one day her persistence could be aimed at _him._

He figures that he might as well not prolong this, so he presses his lips to hers again and then tells her, “My mom called the other day.”

Betty, whose body has sunk against his, rises with a rigid spine. “What?! When? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Jughead doesn’t want to see her face when he answers, so he flops backward, leaving Betty sitting on his prone legs, and says, “She wanted me to move to Toledo.” 

_“What?”_

“I’m not going to,” he assures her, rising to his elbows. “I’d rather live here than there. Besides, a few weeks ago I called her _begging_ to move to Toledo, and she refused me, so she’s probably already changed her mind by now.” 

Betty’s face softens. “I’m sure she hasn’t, Juggie.” She sighs and grabs his hands, holding them closed together in hers. “I only remember her a little. You always did spend more time at Archie’s than the other way around, so pretty much just her picking you up, or with Jellybean at the store, but - she can’t be all bad.” She squeezes his hands, but neither that nor what she’s saying is encouraging. “And even if - she’s made mistakes, but it could be a good thing. You wouldn’t have to live with the Topazes anymore, and maybe you could come back to school?”

Jughead doesn’t answer right away. Betty doesn’t seem to like him on the south side very much, at least from what he’s observed; she’s never said it outright, but it’s probably somewhere, caught at the back of her throat. He can see why she wouldn’t, but that’s only because she doesn’t understand - _can’t_ understand - why this is the right move for him in the first place.

“She wants me when it’s convenient, until I remind her a little too much of my dad, and then I become inconvenient,” Jughead finally replies. He can hear the sound of his own voice, and he hates it. The words come out almost like he’s spitting, a mixture of anger and disappointment, a true FP Jones tone, but maybe that’s fitting, too.

Betty says nothing at first, just swings her legs to the side and rests them parallel to Jughead’s so that she can lower her body down on top of his. He accepts her gladly, sliding his arms around her waist and nudging his nose against hers, stopping his slow advance only when she says, “You’re never inconvenient to me.”

Her words make his eyelids close. “I love you,” he tells her, then kisses her. She tastes like the stale hospital coffee they’d all had one too many cups of earlier, but she’s here with him and she wants him and loves him and right now he feels like he’s never wanted anything more than that in his life, more than her.

“I love you too,” Betty breathes into his mouth, her hands pushing at the hem of his shirt until the fabric is at his armpits and he has to break the kiss to shed it. He takes the opportunity to lift hers, too, tossing the sweater somewhere on the dusty floor of the trailer, just another pretty thing too good for where it rests, a little like her.

“I wanna hear you say it again,” he mumbles, burying his face in her neck for a moment so that he can breathe in the mingling scents of her body wash and shampoo. She always smells clean, he marvels, no matter what they’ve done or where they’ve been.

Betty giggles. “I love you,” she repeats, and when the words hit his ears he kisses her feverishly, letting her deepen it near-immediately. His hands slide up her back to the clasp of her bra, which he unhooks this time with such surprising ease that she actually pulls back to raise an eyebrow at him.

“Finally,” Jughead mutters, pulling her back in.

They continue for a few more minutes, the only sounds in the trailer being the echoes of occasionally wet kisses, until Betty untangles her bra straps from her arms and pulls it off of her body with a mixture of confidence and nerves on her face.

He stares; he has to. She’s beautiful and they’re beautiful and _fuck,_ he loves her so much. The pace of it all is terrifying and wonderful at the same time, but he’s never been so glad to be overwhelmed than he is in this moment. She’s on top of him, brilliant, incredible, Betty, with her lips parted and eyes darkened and her breasts in his palms, and Jughead knows that he’s the luckiest guy, that of all the trailer parks in all the world, _she walked into his,_ like they’re Bogart and Bergman but this time maybe, just maybe, it can end happily.

 

**

 

**

 

**

 

**

 

_Tap-tap. Tap-tap._

Kevin stares at the slight dust on the windowsill in his bedroom, ears filled with the sound of his pencil drumming against the edge of his desk, wondering when he’d last cleaned. It was definitely before Moose and Midge were shot, but was it before Fred died? Before the dance, even? He can’t remember. Not this, not anything, really; his math book is open in front of him but it’s not sinking in, the formulas, and his homework is also about to go unfinished. As if someone could be expected to do homework at a time like _this._

“I’m surprised you’re here.”

He whirls around at the sound of what is unmistakably his father’s voice. His dad, looking tired and worn and older than Kevin’s seen him look in a long time, is leaning against his bedroom doorway, still in uniform.

“Dad.” Now, the surprise is his. “I didn’t think _you’d -_ where else would I be?”

Sheriff Keller shrugs. “Figured maybe you kids would be at Pop’s or something.”

Kevin nods slowly. That _does_ sound good, now that he’s thinking about it. “Maybe we should be.” He turns more fully to face his father, and stands from his desk chair. “I was trying to do math, but -”

“If there’s ever a time that they should understand missed homework, it’s today, son.”

“You’d think so.” Somehow, Kevin doubts that his teacher will be very understanding, even with two of her students in critical condition. “Have you, uh - is there any change with Moose and Midge?"

His father’s face, which is usually hardened with the experiences of his job (and, Kevin imagines, the broad pressures of his life, including suddenly needing to act as a psuedo-single father with his wife away), softens a bit. “Not that I’ve heard,” he replies. “Come downstairs, I brought some pizza home.”

He’s supposed to be cutting for the anticipated start of wrestling, technically, but Kevin can’t bring himself to care right now. He follows his father downstairs and into the kitchen, where a large pizza box sits on the stove, unopened. It’s probably ham and pineapple, Kevin guesses; it’s his father’s favourite and seemingly no one else’s, but he’s content to pick off the pineapple pieces if it means getting to claim half the pizza as his own.

On the table, spread out, are case files. Kevin identifies them easily; the folders are boring manila with stamped numbers on the front, the same as they’ve been for at least the entire time that his dad has been the sheriff. He _is_ slightly surprised to see them at home, with all of the photographs and notes and reports that are surely inside, given that his father’s files about the Jason Blossom case had been fairly recently stolen from inside their home.

(This time, Kevin vows _not_ to look at the pictures. He doesn’t want to see the backseat of Moose’s car from this kind of angle.)

“You locking those up tonight this time?” Kevin asks, gesturing with his head to the case files while filling a plate with slices of pizza.

Sheriff Keller sits down at the table and opens a folder before Kevin can avert his eyes. Luckily, it seems mostly to be full of old printouts from websites and newspapers and not crime scene photos, so Kevin sits down in front of a small, clear space, and begins to eat.

“Yeah. Might not get to bed anyway, though - the tip line was heating up today.”

Kevin’s gaze falls on one of the printouts. It looks to be a list of sightings - from his secondhand experience, he guesses that several old nosy ladies have seen men wearing hooded sweatshirts in their own yards and have reported them - but at the top of the list, the words “Riverdale Reaper” are scrawled in his father’s messy handwriting.

He takes a large bite, and through ham and dough and cheese, he asks, “What’s the Riverdale Reaper?”

Sheriff Keller looks at him, an eyebrow raised in confusion, until he spots the printed list and seems to understand. “Oh. You’ve heard the old wives’ tale, I’m sure.”

Kevin shakes his head. “Nope,” he says, words still muffled.

“It’s something a bunch of older kids made up a long time ago to scare the younger ones at the playground, I’m pretty sure.”

His father stands up and goes to the stove, takes a plate, and begins to retrieve his own slices of pizza. His shirt is unbuttoned now, his white undershirt beneath it exposed and his sleeves wrinkled, which Kevin recognizes a sign of his father’s true exhaustion.

“Years ago, there was a family that lived here, the Conways, that were murdered in the middle of the night. Things were different back then, I’m sure you can imagine, and at the time a lot of people thought that it was some sort of penance for the Conways’ ‘unholy’ lifestyle.” Sheriff Keller sits down and makes a face. “Bullshit, obviously, there’s nothing unholy about a family with a few kids. But the word is that they weren’t married, Mr. Conway didn’t hold a steady job, and the kids were sort of free-range - didn’t make 'em popular in the day. The press started calling the murderer the Riverdale Reaper, and the story goes that since then, the Reaper returns to cleanse the town of its sins.”

Kevin’s eyes widen. “That’s crazy.”

His father nods and takes a large bite of pizza. “Sure is. But a lot of the old coots around town believe in it for some reason, so we’ve gotten a lot of calls about it today. Waste of time, tracking these people down just to rule it out as a legitimate tip. And in the meantime, the asshole that _really_ did this could be anywhere.”

The thought of that makes Kevin’s blood boil. He agrees with his father; clearly, this isn’t a returned murderer from generations past, as that person would have obviously died years ago, nor is he the kind of person inclined to believe in things like ghosts or curses.

 _However,_ Kevin thinks, that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be a copycat.

He files the information away for future reference, lifts another slice of pizza off of his plate, and takes a large bite. The clear, tart taste of pineapple hits his tongue, and he drops the slice in disgust.

 _“Ugh,”_ he complains, “I missed a piece.”

 

**

 

At school on Monday, Kevin learns three pieces of information.

One: Moose and Midge’s conditions have both been upgraded to stable. They’re still unconscious, so things aren’t _perfect,_ but it’s better news than he’s heard in awhile. This he actually learns from his father in the morning while they’re both halfway out the door. Although his and Moose’s relationship is currently _complicated,_ to say the least, the information still makes his heart feel infinitely lighter, and Kevin walks through the doors of Riverdale High with hope in his chest for the first time in maybe weeks.

Two: His math teacher definitely does _not_ care that he’s been too distracted by his onetime sort-of-not-really-boyfriend’s attempted murder to do his homework, even if there’s literally an empty seat in the classroom where Midge Klump _should_ be sitting. The only reason Kevin manages to avoid detention is because his mother phones the office from overseas, having just returned from a mission and gotten word of the attack on her son’s peers.

The third thing that Kevin learns is that the _Blue and Gold_ is an infinitely more tolerable place when he has the offices to himself. He skips the regular cafeteria drama, not particularly interested today in hearing more wild rumours about who or _what_ might be behind the attacks, and takes his sandwich to the newspaper offices to hopefully turn _mights_ and _maybes_ into certainties. He’d been reluctant initially to join Betty’s pet project, particularly given Jughead’s absence - he doesn’t want to be second fiddle, especially not to a friend’s romantic partner - but he’s come to really like the activities at the _Blue and Gold_.

Gossip columns aside, Kevin certainly understands now what the appeal of journalism is. A few more strokes of the keyboard and maybe one day he could be _famous,_ like a modern-day Ronan Farrow for Generation Z, only less vampiric in complexion, obviously.

On a whim, Kevin brings up newspaper articles on Sleuthster about the Riverdale Reaper. He’s been thinking about it since last night, contemplating the idea of a copycat killer, probably utilizing the scary story to cover up a darker, more organizationally sinister agenda, and had decided that he needs to know more about the original case.

A few articles in, Kevin learns a fourth thing: there’d been a survivor.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, scrolling further. He can’t believe it, but there it is in black and white: the youngest child of the Conway family, a boy, had survived the massacre. He’d been adopted into the system, had his name changed, and had been allegedly living a perfectly normal life since then.

 _If he’s even alive,_ Kevin reminds himself, which, noting the timelines, is a reasonable uncertainty.

The doorknob to the office turns as Kevin is poring over another article about it, hoping to find more information on the survivor, and Betty appears. Her ponytail is looser than normal, a few tendrils of hair escaping; truly, a rare sight. She appears to be overworked, stressed, and tired, which six months ago he’d probably have characterized as _abnormal,_ but nowadays may as well be par for the course.

“You’re here,” Betty remarks, surprised.

“Had a hunch based off some stuff my dad told me yesterday,” he replies, grimacing sympathies at her.

Her eyes light up, and when they do, the tension leaves her shoulders, too. “A hunch?”

Kevin hesitates. “It’s probably nothing. But I figured it might be worth looking into.”

Betty pulls up a chair beside his and pushes the empty plate that once held his sandwich away. He wonders, briefly, if she’s eaten today, or if her frantic pace has preempted routine.

“I know investigating is kind of yours and Jughead’s thing,” Kevin begins, apologies heavy in his tone, “but ...”

A strange look crosses Betty’s face at his words. “Well, Jughead’s not here, is he?” she says, her voice strangely emotionless. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

 

**

 

**

 

**

 

**

 

The view from the inside of a trailer at Sunnyside is definitely not what Cheryl is used to. 

It’s been a week now since she’d picked up Nana at the bus station and been prompted to bring her _here,_ to the town’s trailer park. It is, quite possibly, the longest week of Cheryl’s entire damned existence. It’s at least the longest since the one just after Jason disappeared, the one that she’d spent waiting, wishing, hoping for a phone call telling her that her brother had made it to his planned destination with his pregnant teen bride instead of finding his way into the basement of a south side gang den, being shot by his own father, and then kept literally on ice in a Sears-issue chest freezer before being dumped unceremoniously into the river.

 _Yeah,_ Cheryl thinks, watching the lights turn on and then off in the Jones trailer across the way, compared to _that,_ this week is nothing.

(It still sucks.)

“You know, Cheryl, I’m going to have to leave this trailer eventually.”

Cheryl rolls her eyes before turning to look at her grandmother. Her hair is still curled, near-perfect somehow, a surprise for a woman who can barely wash herself without at least a little help. “Nana, I’m working on it,” she informs her. “The ramp came in, okay? I told you, I need help to get it installed. If you’d thought about this at all before stranding us here -”

“I’ll remind you not to be rude to me,” Nana Rose interrupts. “I’m an old woman, don’t you forget.”

“Impossible,” Cheryl mutters, turning back to the window. It’s Nana’s fault, after all; who rents a home in a trailer park, where every tin can abode is accessed by at least three metal steps, when they’re wheelchair-bound? _Actually,_ she thinks, who allows that to happen in the first place? Perhaps they have an ADA case -

“Him,” Nana Rose says, raising her arm to point out the window, where Betty Cooper is descending the steps of FP’s old trailer. Jughead appears at the door, kisses her, and then dear cousin Betty is on her way. “Ask him.”

 _“Nana,”_ Cheryl admonishes. “Absolutely not.”

“It’s just _sitting there,”_ Nana insists, cross. “On the ground. Like trash.”

“Everything on the ground here is trash, including us,” Cheryl snaps. She peers at the dirt just beneath her window and sees the ramp, leaned up on its side, waiting. _“Ugh,”_ she groans, standing up. She fixes the straps of her heels across her ankles, then leaves through the front (only) door, letting it bang behind her as she sets out across the dirt road.

This is not exactly where she thought the Second Coming would take her: off to ask the son of the man who disposed of her brother’s body like garbage to help her install a ramp on her new trailer park home.

Momentarily, a dark cloud hovers at the back of Cheryl’s mind. _There’s still time to get to the river, and this time there's no Archie Andrews to interfere,_ it reminds her, before she shoves the thought away and knocks on FP’s door.

She stands there for a few minutes, her sweater pulled around her against the autumn wind. _Too long,_ she thinks, given that she’d been watching and knows precisely that Jughead is both inside and impossibly close to the front door, since there are only so many places to go in the boxes they call homes.

Finally, the door swings open again. It’s Jughead, obviously, now wearing a different sheepskin-lined jacket than the one she’d _just_ seen him in.

“How many of those fucking things do you own?” she asks, hearing the derision in her own voice and wondering whether she should’ve tempered that before asking for a favour.

To his credit, Jughead only sighs and leans against the door. “What do you want, Cheryl?”

She rolls her eyes, flips her hair back, and says, “Well, as I’m sure you’ve heard _and_ seen by now, Nana dearest and I have taken up an unfortunate residence just across the way. And as I’m sure you’re also aware, my fairweather grandmother is in a wheelchair.”

Jughead straightens a little. “Yeah, I know.”

Cheryl swallows, straining to maintain her composure. Of all of the people she doesn’t want to show weakness to, Jughead has to be near the top of the list. She owes him nothing, she reminds herself, and he owes her everything, or at least his family does.

Still, perhaps he’ll judge her; after all, she’s built her reputation on being well-off, not well-liked. A place like this is not somewhere for a person like her, where she has the suspicion that a decent attitude goes further than money, especially since she’s somewhat short on both of those at the moment. There’s a brief moment where Cheryl contemplates giving an empty compliment, the type that Betty and all of the other Stepfords in town seem to excel at: _what a beautiful faded mint aesthetic your kitchen has; what lovely tattered clothing; I really like what you’ve done with the dying weeds by the steps,_ but she abandons the thought quickly.

“I need help installing her ramp,” she says, keeping her voice curt instead. “And it was pointed out to me that you are both home and available.”

Jughead appraises her silently for a second, then nods silently and steps into the trailer. “I’ll get my dad’s toolbox.”

Fifteen minutes later, Cheryl is leaning up against the side of the trailer she shares with Nana Rose, sipping hot tea and watching the frosted leaves dance around Jughead’s feet. He’s crouched by her steps, tightening the second-to-last screw that holds the final bracket in place for Nana’s ramp, his face contorted into a grimace.

It’s been mostly silence for the duration of his efforts, so Cheryl is slightly taken aback when Jughead asks, with what seems like genuine interest, “So how are you liking Sunnyside?”

Cheryl glares at him. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

Jughead tosses the screwdriver on the ground, gets to his feet, and brushes the cold dirt off of his knees before moving to the other side. “No. Some people live here their whole lives, Cheryl, and it doesn’t make them less important than you.”

“I know that, Hobo,” she snaps, but her cheeks feel suddenly red and she knows that it’s not from the chill in the air.

“Good,” Jughead says honestly, as he kneels down and grabs the last screw. “You really should’ve asked for help when Betty was still here,” he adds. “I think everything’s on right, but if your grandmother falls, I accept no liability.”

Cheryl smiles at that; her cousin does indeed have some interesting, unexpected talents, and if Nana has an accident then that would just seem to fall naturally in line with her other recent tragedies. “Betty had to scurry home,” she sighs, taking a sip of her tea. “Alice’s thumb has left quite a fingerprint.”

Even though she’d intended it at least partially as a joke, her comment seems to make Jughead look sad, and a vaguely unfamiliar feeling of remorse rises in Cheryl’s chest.

“Not everyone’s as cool as Mr. Topaz,” Jughead finally replies, before standing and clicking his father’s toolbox closed.

 _Topaz._ Cheryl strains her memory; the name strikes a bell. She has a sudden image of pink hair, a tight skirt, and a give-no-fucks attitude wafting from a darkened corner of Reggie’s party. _Toni Topaz._ She’d come with Jughead, Cheryl remembers, and now it makes sense - her family is fostering him. And here they are, just down the lane.

Maybe, Cheryl thinks, there’s a silver lining in every cloud after all.

 

**

 

A few hours later, with hairbrush in hand, Cheryl sits at the makeshift vanity that’s crammed into her tiny trailer bedroom, staring at herself in the mirror. She still _looks_ the same - signature Blossom-red hair, porcelain skin, doe eyes with an edge - but she doesn’t know if she feels it. She tugs the brush through the ends of her hair, noting that she needs a trim soon, and then glances at the small window above her bed, where the dying street lights flicker somewhat ominously.

Cheryl begins to wonder: how much of a person is informed by their surroundings? 

Clearly, had she been raised here, in a place like this, she’d be a different person than she is now. Different _how,_ she isn’t sure, but different all the same. Maybe better, but maybe worse, too. Perhaps she’d be in that gang they all seem to be in, wearing a jacket with an ugly logo stamped across the low-grade leather - or perhaps she’d be the good girl, a beacon of light in the darkness. _A Betty Cooper archetype,_ Cheryl thinks, perfect and golden. Neither of them seem to be her, at least not the _her_ that Cheryl understands herself to be at her core, but who is that girl anyway?

The sputtering sound of an old engine rises in volume outside her window. Cheryl leaves her hairbrush behind and goes to peek out, keeping her lights dimmed while her fingers part the dusty blinds. It’s a Buick, that much is identifiable, and not one that Cheryl has seen in the week that she’s been in this hellscape. It’s being driven by what appears to be a woman, but the bad lighting means she can’t be sure, at least not until the vehicle comes to a stop right outside FP Jones’s old trailer.

The lights are off, Cheryl observes. By now, she knows that means that Jughead isn’t there.

“Who are you?” she wonders aloud, her voice low even though Nana’s gone to bed an hour ago and there’s nobody else to disturb. It maintains a bit of the aura of secrecy that she’s currently aiming for, the mysterious rich girl in the ramshackled trailer down that way, two over, one up, by the old Jones place -

A young girl gets out of the passenger side of the vehicle, dressed nearly all in black except for the red flannel shirt that’s tied around her waist. She’s probably eleven-ish, Cheryl appraises, definitely not a teenager yet but still carrying more than the light weight of childhood on her shoulders.

Cheryl edges the window open slightly to hear.

“It’s dark,” the girl announces.

A woman gets out of the passenger side. She’s hard to place age-wise; her body says twenty-two but her face says forty-five, any lines on her forehead being illuminated in quite an unfortunate way by the flickering street light.

“There’s a ramp there now,” the girl continues, pointing at Cheryl’s trailer. “There never used to be one.”

“Must be new neighbours, JB,” the woman dismisses in a tired voice, walking to the trunk of the car. “Come get your bag.”

Cheryl frowns in mild disgust. What kind of a nickname is _that?_ It’s almost as bad as -

“Hobo the third, junior,” she breathes, a wave of realization hitting her.

_Jellybean._

 

 

******

 

******

 

******

 

**tbc**

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listening Playlist:
> 
> Great Lake Swimmers, “The Talking Wind”  
> Iron & Wine, “Flightless Bird, American Mouth”  
> Beck, “Guess I’m Doing Fine”  
> Frightened Rabbit, “The Loneliness and the Scream”


	6. cry-baby

Lately, Jughead has been thinking about the things that go bump in the night.

Unlike Archie, who he distinctly remembers going through a phase that required Jughead’s air mattress to be positioned in a way that blocked the closet door from opening when they had sleepovers, he had never fully understood the fear of false things unknown moving in the shadows; it’d seemed irrational, or—perhaps just unnecessary.

He was never afraid of what may lie under the bed, because it couldn’t be louder than the noises outside his window. He never once thought there was any kind of monster or ghost in the closet—because he didn’t have one, just a shabby, dinged up old armoire that was one slammed door away from collapsing in on itself. And he never needed a nightlight, because there was plenty of light spilling in from the nearby highway overpass, filtered through the blinds like some crap noir film.

Jughead understood the way fear worked, though.

His father, yelling through a stupor, his mother screaming right back, and Jellybean always scuttling into his room. Eventually, he’d just decided to give her his headphones—they’d been huge on her, and he’d saved all summer for them, but he’d rather she hear the croaking of his beloved Mountain Goats album than the fight happening beyond the door. He swallowed those shouts for her, and then taught her how to drown them out.

So—no, Jughead has never been afraid of monsters. There was no need to fear the unknown when what he did know was just as scary.

But now, with an almost supernatural aura of mystery and ripples of urban legend fueling paranoia around these attacks, he thinks—he’s beginning to understand.

Things moving out of the corner of his eye make him freeze, a rattling can rolling across the trailer park makes him jump, and any time he hears the wailing siren of a police car tearing down the highway, he prepares for the worst, prepares for the news of another slaying, attempted or otherwise.

And it’s not just him—even at Southside High, which has been thus far untouched by these attacks, there are still rumblings, too loud to ignore. Rumors plume in the air like a cigarette left in a tray to burn; reports swirl that it’s the Bunny Man, or the Slender Man, or some ageless and sin-obsessed wraith, or the vengeful phantom of a murdered member of a founding family—the list goes on. If there’s a myth circulating out there, he’s sure he’s heard it.

Jughead had recently even walked into his English class to see Sweet Pea standing atop his desk and surrounded by a small crowd, his arms thrown out and loudly proclaiming some Northsiders had disturbed the spirits of an Uktena burial ground and this was their punishment, while the rest of the students drummed the fists on the desks in tandem to his carrying voice.

He’d rolled his eyes, but then Betty had relayed Kevin’s story of the Riverdale Reaper, so rooted in the town’s history, and—well, whatever the truth is, however _positive_ he is that these attacks aren’t layered in something beyond reasonable explanation, he still can’t quite shed the tingle on his spine.

That he feels something lurking in the dark, that there’s another attack lying in wait, slithering out of a sinister, secret space. That there are eyes out there, watching. Even if it _is_ just a man and his gun, playing with chaos like a child plays with marbles. Throwing a ball and seeing what it scatters.

Still. He thinks of Moose and Midge and Fred and all the insides of a hospital he’s seen by now.

He wonders if he’s been thinking about monsters all wrong.

**

“I’m bringing pea soup this year,” Sweet Pea is saying to Fangs, a spoonful of amorphous cafeteria mash in his mouth.

“God, would it kill you to be a little more original?” Toni replies, eyes already rolling as she and Jughead slide into the same bench opposite the pair of boys. Both of their trays clatter down onto the metal table loudly, and really, it’s too cold to eat outside, but the cafeteria is getting fumigated again, so lunch in c-minus it is.

(At least he’s covered on headgear.)

“It’s tradition,” Sweet Pea sneers, though with all the food in his mouth, it comes out more like _smhf trdition._ He swallows. “We’re the _Pea-_ body family. What the hell else would I bring?”

“By that logic, Fangs should bring, what, a fully intact fanged boar?” Toni asks, raising her eyebrows. Across from her, the boy in question chuckles.

“Leave me out of this, I’m just bringing stuffing. My aunt makes it, it’s amazing,” he adds to Jughead, looking entertained. Which is more than Jughead himself can say, bouncing his eyes between the three of them questioningly.

“What are you guys talking about?” He asks, uncapping his bottle of orange juice.

“The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” Sweet Pea replies dryly, shoveling in another bite.

“That’s the Halloween episode, genius,” Toni sighs, and then twists in her seat to face Jughead. “I actually meant to tell you this morning—every year, the Serpents host a big Thanksgiving potluck at the Wyrm. You should come. Bring...well, if we’re stuck on this family theme, whatever you’ve got a Jones for.”

Fangs and Sweet Pea exchange amused looks, and Jughead rolls his eyes, grinning. “Jesus, I’ll go hoarse reminding you I’m not a Serpent,” he says flatly, as it has become something of a joke by now. _Jughead, you coming to the arcade? Oops, actually, Serpents only. Jughead, want some of my fries? Oops, sorry, they’re just for Serpents._ It goes on. And Jughead truly doesn’t mind it; the more they joke about it, the less serious it seems.

“It’s open to the public anyway,” Toni adds. “South side only, of course. But it’s nice. There’s cider and turkey, all the expected trappings of an unachievable ideal, blah, blah.”

“The American dream, just in a motorcycle bar,” Fangs offers.

Toni grins at him. “I think it’s what Norman Rockwell would’ve really wanted, if he actually thought about it.”

Jughead takes a moment as he sips at his juice, considering the mental image of a Thanksgiving turkey being served on top of a felt green pool table. It does actually sound kind of nice, at least in terms of his predisposition for blended aesthetics—but his plans have been solidified for weeks. “Well, thanks, but I’m already going to Betty’s this year.”

“Suit yourself,” Toni says after a studious moment. She pivots back in her seat and ducks her head down to lowly add, “Be sure to say hi to Uncle Sam and Captain America while you’re there.”

Sweet Pea snickers as Jughead stifles a sigh. Toni’s little digs at Betty have always been hard to miss, but lately, she seems to be even moodier about all things north side. He doesn’t know what set it off, but at this point it’s impossible to ignore, especially given her current state of glowering.

It’s possible that his reinforced tendency towards peacemaker (unstoppable force) has finally met its match in stubborn bias (immovable object) because all of his attempts to facilitate a little bit of warming have failed quite spectacularly.

But other than Betty’s zip code, he’s not sure what it is. He genuinely doesn’t think it’s jealousy in the sense that Toni  _likes_ him—not that he’s particularly confident in that regard, but he’s also certain she’s the type to have made a move if she did—and it’s still possible that she just resents Betty as the most stereotypical manifestation of all things north side.

And frankly, he’d _like_ for them to get along. Maybe he’s just projecting the fact that he admittedly misses his own sister onto Toni’s role as his foster sister, but—he’s getting comfortable with the Topazes. And he’d like for Betty to be comfortable there too. For her to _get it,_ a little bit.

Though if his father were here, Jughead can guess what he’d say. Probably something nonsensically apt like _kid, you’ll never see a snake and a butterfly dance, so don’t bother with the music._

“Toni,” Jughead starts anyway, once again gearing up for a losing battle.

“Relax, Jones. She’s just jealous that you’re getting some apple pie and she’s not,” Sweet Pea interrupts, grinning widely and wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. Toni throws one of her soggy carrot sticks at him, which hits him square in the forehead.

“You’re such a pig,” she snaps, huffing with something that must be disgust.

In response, Sweet Pea makes an oinking noise and promptly gets another carrot in his face. This one hits him in the cheek, which falls down and lands in a firm crease of his leather jacket. He doesn’t seem to notice.

Fangs miserably fails to hide his chuckle behind his fist, and Jughead shakes his head, but can’t quite help the grin.

**

Archie calls after school that day.

Jughead is in his room, flipping through the borrowed, dog-eared copy of _Fahrenheit 451_ as he marks a few notes in the margins. Sure, it’s a library book, but someone has also already taken the liberty of transcribing what appears to be an ode to a fart joke every couple of pages, so his scribbling of _actual_ homework can hardly compare.

Besides the quiet companionship of Vegas, he has the trailer to himself; Thomas is at work at the body shop, and Toni is at the quarry, despite the frigid conditions. She at least _had_ invited him along—the boys had apparently come up with the ingenious concept of drilling into the ice to launch firecrackers stolen from Fangs’ cousin underneath the frozen lake. And given that Jughead thought there was a solid forty percent chance that idea would backfire, explode, and kill them all, he had opted to pass.

But—it hasn’t escaped his attention that, well, despite his repeated insistences that he won’t be joining the gang, here they are, _still_ inviting him to things, even the ones that truly appear to not be Serpent-tangential.

At first, he was certain there were ulterior motives, but lately, he’s been wondering.

Because by now, even he has to admit it’s actually possible they are including him because they like him, Jughead Jones, rather than because of who his father is or where he was born. But for a person who made his only pair of friends before age four, it’s…an unfamiliar concept.

When his phone rings, he’s wading through that thought so deeply that it makes him jump. It’s unhelped by the fact that Jughead has forgotten the saved contact photo for Archie is an image of Jughead with the two Andrews, Fred’s arms around both boys.

“Shit,” he sighs to himself, and then swipes across to accept the call. “Hey, man. What’s up? How’re things?”

Jughead cringes a little as soon as it comes out—what a stupid question, _how are things,_ but truthfully, he’s a bit surprised to hear from Archie so directly and it briefly threw him off.

Of course, they have been talking since he left, but it’s been largely through texts or over headset while playing the same video game, hundreds of miles apart. He’s had to use the Cooper TV since the Topazes’ kept frizzing out with too much strain; he thinks it annoys Betty’s parents, but the grief card has gotten them both a lot of mileage under that roof.

Archie clears his throat. “They’re okay,” he says. “How’s Vegas? How’s…it at home?”

It’s a bit of an ironic question, considering that both boys have left theirs. One in Chicago, and one just across a trailer park, but pushed out all the same.

“Vegas is same old, same old. Misses you, though. And things are okay here,” Jughead replies vaguely, tapping his pencil eraser against the little desk in his room. Given how sparingly he sees (or trusts) Veronica, he’s not sure how much Archie knows, let alone how much is worth saying. He glances at Vegas, curled up on the bed. The dog’s ears are perked up a little, and Jughead wonders if he can hear Archie’s voice through the phone. “Or I’m adjusted to it, I guess. How’s Chicago?”

“Colder than I thought,” Archie admits, chuckling. They haven’t talked a lot about the move; most of their conversations over the video games have been largely about such. “And not as windy.”

Jughead grins to himself, though it fades. “Yeah. That’s nomenclature for you.”

“The new school is alright though. I just started a few days ago but I already joined the football team. And even though it’s late in the season, I still got a position off the bench. It’s kind of nice not to be fighting with Reggie and actually, like, playing. And I like the people in my music class too. I have to wear a school uniform though, which is, uh, different,” Archie says, and Jughead swivels in his chair to stare through the open bedroom door, where Toni’s spare Serpent jacket hangs on the hook on the other side of the trailer.

 _A school uniform indeed,_ he thinks.

“Sucks,” Jughead says, eyes still on the jacket. Then he turns back. “Least you’ve already got the cardigans, right?”

“Shut up,” Archie laughs. Then he pauses. “Hey, I actually called because I wanted to ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

“Well, I was kind of thinking about how we always used to have you over for Thanksgiving,” Archie says slowly, as if trying to tread carefully. Jughead thinks he knows why; it was always an open invitation for all the Joneses over the holiday, but Jughead was the only consistent guest. “My mom has always really liked you, Jug, and I don’t know, I think she’d definitely pay for a ticket for you to come out here. Like if you wanted to come for Thanksgiving.”

Jughead hardly knows what to say; he’s positive Archie hasn’t thought through how expensive a plane ticket would be three days before a major travel holiday, but where before he’d roll his eyes, this fact just makes him miss his best friend fiercely, his throat suddenly feeling closed up.

It’s the exact kind of blindly impossible gesture that only Archie would make.

He’ll never have another friend like Archie Andrews.

Clearly reading his silence the wrong way, Archie hastens to add, “Look, I know it’s totally last minute and you’re probably going to Betty’s, but…with your dad…and your foster…” Archie trails off clumsily. “I just wanted to offer. You know, like old times.”

He runs his tongue over his bottom lip, an ache blooming against his ribcage. _Like old times,_ he thinks. What a stupid, self-contradictory phrase. Even if he wants them, he can’t _have_ the old times back; that’s _why_ they’re the old times.

Jughead doesn’t say any of this. Instead, “Thanks, Arch. I appreciate that. Really. I… I am going to Betty’s, though.”

There’s another moment where he’s sure Archie is just nodding his head. “Yeah, I thought so,” he says, though plainly morose. “Well, that’s good.” He starts to say something, and then stops. Eventually, he seems to find his words, “It’s just…it’s gonna be hard without him here. I’ve never had any holidays without—”

He chokes off, and Jughead’s pencil clatters onto the desk as he drops it to rub at his forehead. “I know,” he murmurs into the phone. Both boys are quiet for a while. “Arch, Betty and I are working on piecing together what happened. We’re gonna figure it out. For you and your dad.”

Archie doesn’t say anything, and that seems meaningful. Though to what, Jughead has no idea.

Finally, he clears his throat again. “Hey, have you talked to Veronica lately?”

“No offense, but she and I don’t really… _chat,”_ Jughead replies awkwardly. “Our list of common interests starts and ends with the letter B. I can ask said B though, if you want.”

“No, don’t do that,” Archie sighs. “I know she’s just been busy, with her dad out of jail now and back home.”

 _Ah yes,_ Jughead thinks darkly, twisting in his chair in a semi-circle. The mutinous thought that’s been nagging at him since Moose and Midge bubbles up to the surface.

For, despite all of his musings on Uktena ghosts or urban legends, there’s one thread Jughead hasn’t been able to voice aloud: Hiram Lodge, Riverdale’s very own vampiric Bernie Madoff, mysteriously arriving back in town around the same time that there’s been a certain influx of violent crimes.

First Fred, then inexplicably Grundy, and now two of his fellow students—all coinciding right after one Talented Mr. Lodge got out of prison. Not that he could probably prove there’s a correlation, let alone even suggest it without evidence to Betty. How do you tell your girlfriend that you think her best friend’s father’s very presence belongs on the murder board?

Again, and more pressingly, he wonders if Archie even knows about the new attacks. _He must,_ Jughead thinks. Veronica had _said_ she would tell him, and presumably, the news hasn’t escaped social media, especially if he’s still following Reggie.

This is probably the moment to bring it up, and yet—again, how? Moreover, what good would it do, to remind Archie, safely eight hundred miles away, that his father’s killer has struck again and no one is anywhere near catching them? Maybe—Archie isn’t mentioning it because he doesn’t want to.

There’s a knocking at the trailer door, and Jughead blows out a breath. Toni probably forgot her keys again. “Hey, someone’s here, I gotta run. But Betty and I will try to FaceTime you on Turkey Day, okay?”

“Okay,” Archie replies, sighing at the same time that Vegas loudly releases a huff of air, still on the bed. “Wanna play Halo on Black Friday?”

“Don’t have any funds to throw on that glorious shrine to consumerism anyway,” Jughead replies wryly. “So that sounds good; I’ll text you. And…thanks for the invite, Arch. Seriously. We’ll make it work another time.”

“Yeah, dude. Any time you want to come, just let me know.” He pauses. “Bye.”

“Bye,” Jughead echoes, feeling the word inexplicably burn across his chest. But someone is still knocking, and now Vegas has clambered off the bed and started barking, so he throws his phone down and pads towards the front of the trailer.

He pulls the door open, and there, distorted behind the remaining gray screen door, are the two last people he would’ve ever expected to see back in Sunnyside.

Jughead squints. _“Mom?”_

**

Immediately, his little sister throws open the screen door and propels herself into Jughead’s stomach. He stumbles back with a small _oof_ , but his arms wrap around her at once, even if he can’t take his eyes off his mother, who still stands there, distorted by the swinging screen.

He, somehow, hates that she looks mostly the same. He’s not sure what he’s expected, given it’s only been six months since he last saw her, but her dark hair is twisted up in its typical loose knot, her hoop earrings dangling, and she’s wearing a black turtleneck and dark jeans. She’s also traded out her motorcycle jacket for a long, dark leather trench coat, and the effect is—confusing.

The most familiar, however, are her eyes, which everyone always told him were just like his own. He thought that was wrong; truly, the only thing they had in common were the bags underneath, those long, sloping, skeptical lines that would lead tear to cheek. Those are still there.

“Hi Jug,” Jellybean mumbles happily against his sweater.

“Can I come in?” Gladys asks quietly, still unmoved.

He flattens his palm against the top of Jellybean’s head and says to his mother, “What are you doing here?”

“We came home to see you,” his sister replies, lifting her chin off of his stomach and looking up at him. “For Thanksgiving. You wouldn’t come to us. So we came to you.”

Apparently having given up waiting for her invitation, Gladys opens the screen door, smiling, but thinly. She exhales, looking just as weary as the day she left. Her eyes flick between her two children. “We got in last night, but we didn’t want to wake you.”

Jughead gapes at her. In the early months following her departure, this would’ve been something only out of his wildest dreams. That his mother would one day wake up and realize that she had to come home, and not because he asked her to.

But that’d been—before. Before Jason, before Betty, before his father’s arrest, but mostly, before he’d tried to board a bus westward and been essentially told, no matter how veiled, he shouldn’t have bothered.

And now, he has no idea what to feel. He does, however, have a few things he’d like to _say,_  but not in the present company of his baby sister, so he bites his tongue. She lets go of his abdomen as soon as Vegas nudges at her hand, dropping down to her knees to pet him.

“Why is Vegas here?” Jellybean asks, giggling as the dog licks eagerly at her face.

Jughead and his mother exchange a rare, understanding glance. “I’m watching him for a while,” he says, deciding that’s a better version of the truth for a ten year old.

“So, this is where you’ve been staying,” Gladys says, almost conversationally, her hands in her pockets. “This is nice. Really.”

Thomas Topaz does have one of the nicer, wider trailers in the park, but on principle, he automatically wants to disagree with her. He doesn’t.

“Yeah, it’s been fine,” he replies distractedly, glancing at Jellybean, still petting Vegas. “You know we moved after you left, right? Into Grandpa’s old trailer?”

Gladys exhales. “So I heard through the snake-vine, as your father liked to call it. We slept there last night.” At Jughead’s bemused look, she adds flatly, “Baby, your father has been hiding keys under garden gnomes as long as I’ve known him. It’s about the only thing consistent about him.”

Jughead throws her a glare; she hasn’t been in his presence two minutes without throwing insults around. Gladys seems to recognize his frustration, however, because her eyes dart off.

He sighs, equally defeated. “Well, I’ll walk over with you to Dad’s.”

“Can we bring Vegas?” Jellybean asks, bouncing upright. He finally gets a good look at her, black hair piled up in twin buns, swallowed by what appears to be a man's Carhartt coat over his old Bright Eyes t-shirt, the one he bought when he was only a little older than she is now. Her clothes are plainly too big, but somehow everything still looks incredibly deliberate on her; even her jeans are ratty in a way that looks natural, as opposed to the way he suspects rips and holes look on him.

She’s already tall for her age, twiggy and lanky and zooming upwards towards eleven like he did, and—his chest heaves. He realizes she is the age he was in that old, creased photograph of them that he’s pinned up in the new room, and doesn’t know what to do with that thought.  

He snaps out of it.

“Duh. His leash is on the hook,” he says, grinning and jerking his head towards the hanging rack. Both he and their mother watch her bound over; he turns back just in time to see Gladys’s face hardening over at the sight of Toni’s leather jacket next to the leash.

Jughead grabs his own denim coat off an armchair and shoulders into it, something his mother watches him do quite carefully. He suspects she’s wondering where _his_ Serpent jacket is, after all.

Jellybean clips Vegas into his leash, and he excitedly pulls her out into the fresh powder, the remaining Joneses following after.

The walk across the trailer park is silent but for the sniffing dog and the crunch of snow underneath their boots, and when they pull up in front of the old Jones trailer, Gladys reaches into her coat pocket to retrieve a set of keys.

He makes a noncommittal noise as she unlocks the door and the three of them traipse inside. Jughead notices two suitcases parked just beyond the trailer entrance; a painfully familiar inverse of the night they left.

“Noticed last night the lights were out,” Gladys sighs, fiddling with the switch anyway. To Jughead’s surprise, however, the overhead lamp flickers on, throwing warmth over the otherwise filtered wintery light. “I guess no one had been paying this bill. Makes sense, with you not here. I called the electric company this morning, had it turned back on.”

 _Look who finally wants to pay bills,_ Jughead thinks sourly, though somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he is appreciative for the power being back on. “If you’re going to be here long enough,” he says, hating the way his voice sounds childish but unable to stop it. Like he can’t help but want to test her—and clearly, she notices, eyes darting towards him.

“Jellybean, would you give me and your brother a few minutes?” Gladys asks, turning towards her daughter.

“I told you, Mom, I wanna be called _JB_ now,” she replies automatically, though after a glance between them she then nods. “And I guess this is why I have noise canceling headphones,” she mutters, pulling a bulky pair out of a duffle bag on the kitchen table, guiding Vegas towards the back of the trailer.

As soon as the door to the second bedroom is closed, mother and son look at one another and sink into opposite seats.

“I already have Thanksgiving plans, Mom,” Jughead says at once, unsure where else to begin. _Had my share of offers,_ he wants to pout. “At Betty’s.”

Gladys blinks. “Betty Cooper?”

“Yeah. If you’d called first, you would know that. Then again, if you’d bothered to stick around, you’d also know that we’re together now,” he says venomously; now that his little sister is out of earshot, there’s no point in holding back.

“Oh,” Gladys says, leaning forward in the armchair usually occupied by the man who is, technically, still her husband. “I always liked that girl. She was so sweet, unli— Well. That’s…nice, baby.”

 _Stop calling me that._ “How long are you planning on being here for this time? No, strike that, _why_ are you _here_ , Mom? Really?”

A large dark curl has come free of its bun, and distractedly, Gladys readjusts it across her forehead. It’s a motion he’s surely done thousands of times, an unconscious tick he now recognizes was learned.

“I don’t know—how long—your sister has been listening on calls,” Gladys stumbles over the start of her sentence, sucking her lips in, and stares down at her hands. “And she overheard—well—”

“Great,” Jughead mutters, throwing up his hands. “You’re not even here because you want to be. You’re just here because of Jellybean. What, did she throw a hissy fit because she found out you’d let her brother go into foster care?”

She looks up sharply. “That is _not_ fair, Jughead. I _told_ you that you could come to Ohio.”

He can feel his jaw ticking off the seconds. “Do you really want to get into what’s _fair,_  Mom?” He asks coldly; the effect is instantaneous. Shame has the decency to flicker across his mother’s face, and she hangs her head again. He watches the loose, black curl drift across her forehead again.

Finally, she meets his eye. “I always let you have a _choice_ , Jughead. Growing up, I never got to make my own, but I made sure you and your sister did. Always. You wanted to stay. First with your dad, and then again, through all…” She gestures vaguely at the air. “…This. And I let you decide that each time.”

She holds her breath, staring at him, and for some reason, he thinks, _she looks so young._ “Does that not count for anything?”

“You shouldn’t have put me in the position where I _had_ to choose, Mom,” he replies lowly. “I was a kid.”

Gladys finally exhales, and it’s so cold inside the trailer that he can see her breath pluming before her. Her eyes, dark and so vacant in his memories, now flicker like candlelight across his face.

“You _are_ a kid, baby,” she murmurs, so sadly it makes him furious. “You’re only sixteen.”

“No, I grew up as soon as you left,” he snaps. “I had to. Dad really fell off the wagon after you abandoned us. You know that, right? It made things so much worse. I couldn’t take it every day anymore, and—” But he cuts off, unwilling to allow her entry into his sob story. She doesn’t need to know about the Drive-In. He doesn’t need her looking at him like every other adult did. Doesn’t need her.

He breathes through his nose and rubs his palms into his eyes. “Look, I’m glad to see Jellybean, and I don’t want her to leave,” he says, not looking at her through his hands. They slap down hard against his thighs. “So…I’ll talk to Betty and see if you guys can also come to her Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Oh,” Gladys mumbles, looking strangely caged. “At the Coopers’. Jughead, I don’t know if that’s the best idea.”

“Well, too bad, Mom,” he says, getting up off the couch. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to, but I’m going to go tell Jellybean that’s the plan.”

He gets up, and doesn’t plan to glance back—but he’s never been known for his impulse control. He pauses just at the edge of the hallway, looking over his shoulder to see his mother with her head buried in her hands.

Might as well be sand.

**

**

**

**

The Lodges are always fans of a formal affair, a fact that is never clearer than when the holiday season begins its frog march towards December.

But the Upper East Side experience was always decadent; new dresses, new shoes, red velvet and green pistachio macarons at Christmas, roast turkey prepared by Michelin chefs, fresh wreaths that were spritzed with alpine water twice a day to maintain their look—all things she had been told to _unequivocally_ say goodbye to when her father was carted off by federal agents.

And for all intents and purposes, she already had. 

It wasn’t easy, as Veronica Lodge has always easily attached and materialism dies hard, but she’d bid her farewells to opulence best she could, broke the habits save for when there was a point needing to be made, and had made peace with the fact that her lifestyle would—well, change.

Which, of course it had. It was obvious after she and her mother lost their standing table at _Avant-Garden,_  obvious after girls she’d foolishly considered friends began giggling when she walked out of a room, obvious after the announcement that they were moving to a nowhere-town on the Metro North, and obvious after everything that followed.

But then she’d befriended Betty and Archie, Kevin, surprisingly Cheryl, and on the rainiest of days, even Jughead, and had felt something click into place like a minted Tiffany watch. These people were kind and unfettered by grand material—well, excluding Cheryl—and when the friendship she had to offer was only her own rather than her father’s plastic, they accepted it happily.

She not only grew accustomed to her new lifestyle, new friends, but she became, as she’s prone to, attached.

And so last month, when Archie had offered her and her mother a seat at the Andrews’ Thanksgiving table _(“Nah, our parents will be cool with it, Ronnie,”_ he’d said, so earnestly and confidently she truly fell for it), she’d readily accepted, eager for a more genuine, if cliché, holiday experience.

That, of course, is no longer an option.

The day before the holiday, school is already out on break, so Veronica allows herself a long morning soaking in the bathtub and catching up on her reading. (Not _all_ indulgences are off the list, of course.) Snow falls gently across the French window, and steam rises up across the water, mingling with the lit verbena candles.

She sinks low in the tub, all the way down to the line of her nose, and tries her hardest not to think.

It won’t work, but at least, here in the bath, she can’t face the digital demons of SMS; her mother’s cryptic warnings not to come home right away and the text-debt she’s racked up with Archie both linger in her thoughts every time she so much as looks at her phone.

As soon as she got home, Veronica had _planned_ both to ask what the _hell_ the FBI were doing at her family’s apartment again, considering the whole thing reeks of the trial of last year, and then dispense the bad news to her boyfriend—but thus far she’s only achieved one of those things.

But by the time she got back from the hospital, her whole body aching with fatigue, there was only a dimly crackling fire in the hearth and the whispering shadows underneath the door to her father’s study, and Veronica knows better than to listen at keyholes anymore.

So she’d carried herself to bed, and lain in the center of it, taking up as much space as she could. Then she had pressed her phone to her chest and thought of all the things she had _thought_ she had wanted to know.

Wasn’t it kinder to spare someone news they may never hear?

In the end, she sent it—he _would_ hear about Moose and Midge, that much was inevitable, so it would come best from her. And it was, quite literally, the least she could do. Archie’s response had been swift, just a simple: _fuck_.

 _Interesting_ , she’d thought, how both ends of that word seemed to define so much of her young life thus far.

Veronica realizes now that the tips of her fingers have begun to prune and the water is growing colder around her ankles, so with hesitance, she pulls herself out of the water. Although with any luck, she’ll still have dawdled past breakfast and her parents will be out for the day.

She drapes her bathrobe around her and puts her reading glasses back on, mercifully not too foggy from the rising steam. Tapping the home screen on her phone with one finger, she sees that there are a handful of texts waiting for her.

Some are from Betty or Cheryl, but two are from Archie, wondering if she has time to Skype today—and there’s no accompanying winky face that means phone sex, so perhaps he truly just wants to talk to her, which feels…worse.

Veronica reasons she’ll reply later, when her hands aren’t pruned. Yes, that makes the most sense. She slips the phone into her robe pocket.

When she opens up the double doors leading back into her bedroom, there’s something on her bed that wasn’t there before.

She moves towards the dark purple dress, primly waiting on a satin hanger and laid out smoothly against her eggshell sheets. It’s beautiful, with a delicate lacework collar and a matching hem, but it still makes her frown, largely because this is the fourth gift this month, and she still doesn’t understand where all this new money is coming from.

And somehow, the excuse that her father’s release from prison had released their funds just doesn’t fully hold up. She _knows_ that part of Daddy’s plea bargain had included reparations to his stockholders. They couldn’t have gotten _all_ their wealth back, just like that, a snap of the fingers—and yet her father has certainly been acting like it.  

 _When in doubt, always follow the money, Veronica_ , she hears in her mother’s voice, and then in her own: _but follow it where? And for what gain?_

Sharply and immediately, she thinks: _don’t ask a question you don’t want the answer to._ She has well and learned from that mistake, especially after the snowball of Jason Blossom and Jughead’s father.

If she opens that one box, she might as well open them all. Pandora, Pandora.

She shakes her head.

Next to the dress is both a note and a pair of pearl earrings, which would be invisible were it not for the sheath of cobalt velvet fabric they’ve been pinned into. She picks up the note, recognizing the looping cursive at once.

 _The world is your oyster only when you are its pearl,_ her father writes.

It’s always the same line whenever he bequeaths her with a new set of jewelry, and it used to make her smile.

She drops the card back down and stifles the desire to roll her eyes.

Veronica instead tousles her hair out of its clip, turning her back on the gifts spread across her bed, and dresses out of her closet. When she emerges from her room, phone left on the bed, her new pearls half-begrudgingly in place, she sees that her parents are still at the dining table and that breakfast is waiting for her.

Her father lowers his paper as she comes in. “Good morning, _mija,”_ he says warmly. His eyes slide back to his readings, but not before adding, only slightly more chilled, “You’re not wearing the new dress I had laid out for you.”

“I thought that was for tomorrow’s dinner,” Veronica lies smoothly, and lifts a finger to her hair to brush it away from her ear. “But I love the new pearls, Daddy.”

Hiram smiles at his daughter, and then returns his full attention onto his newspaper. Across the table, her mother watches her carefully. Veronica wonders if her little act of protest in playing dumb over the dress wasn’t quite so subtle.

 _Then again,_ Veronica thinks darkly, meeting her mother’s sharp gaze _, you can’t con a con._

Because apparently, Hermione Lodge has always been adept at maneuvering for and around power, and sees far more than she says.

That was the other thing Veronica learned this year.  

However, her mother says nothing, picks up her copy of _The New Yorker,_ and doesn’t look at her again.

Veronica cuts her breakfast sausage into tiny, delicate bites.

**

After she’s eaten enough breakfast to be excused from the table, Veronica carries the remainder of her coffee back to her bedroom and her waiting cell phone, which sits unassumingly on a silken pillow, though she can feel it practically monitoring her every move. Tentatively, she moves forward, taps on the home screen, and yes, there’s another text from Archie and dread bubbles at her chest like a forcefully shaken bottle of _Cristal_.

And of course, immediately following dread is guilt; hot, empty, vacant guilt. Her boyfriend wants to talk to her. Her boyfriend, who witnessed his father’s murder, wants to talk to her. Her boyfriend, who would never leave her side if the Choo was on the other foot, never once waver, certainly never wonder if this was _all really worth it._

Her boyfriend, who will remain almost exactly eight hundred miles away from her for the indefinite future.

Biting her lip, Veronica finally picks up her phone.

**

“For the record, I’m not accepting Veronica Lodge’s cast offs, like some kind of pauperish charity case,” Cheryl says, though she continues to rifle through the closet with aplomb.

“You are not a charity case, Cheryl, your house burned down. There’s a ten-thousand-square-footage difference. It’s amazing that you happened to have any clothes at your grandmother’s house at all, but I have been…evaluating, and come to the conclusion that I _need_ to Marie Kondo my life. I’ve accumulated again. So, please, take some things,” Veronica replies, one hand pushing backwards into her sheets.

Cheryl purses her lips and then turns back to the closet. “Fine, but only because I’m in desperate need of some decadence,” she says, sighing deeply.

Her expression is forlorn, so Veronica feels compelled to say, “You know, Sunnyside isn’t _so_ bad, Cheryl. Trust me, things can always be worse.”

Cheryl looks tempted to argue, but then appears to deflate. _“That,”_ she says, punctuating the word with a sharp tug on a hanger, “is true.” She peruses the closet for a moment, and then extracts a plum-colored negligee. “Too bad _this_ isn’t getting any mileage right now. Tell me, when are you breaking up with Boy Wonder again?”

“I—” Veronica stares at Cheryl, briefly at a loss for words. “Honestly, Cheryl. I’m not breaking up with Archie. I’ll grant we’re having a rough patch, with distance, but that’s all.”

“Really?” Cheryl asks dubiously, raising her eyebrows. “After our last chat, I’d penned it as imminent.”

“That was a moment of weakness. I was exhausted.”

“And the fact that your phone has been buzzing every twenty minutes and you haven’t looked at it once?”

Veronica pushes her phone further across the bed. “Maybe they’re just Instagram notifications. You don’t know they’re from Archie.”

“Well, you _realize_ this is a literal _Carpe D-M_ moment,” Cheryl objects dryly, returning the negligee to the closet. “What happened to things being _shaky?”_

 _Pandora, Pandora,_ Veronica thinks again, squeezing her eyes shut once Cheryl’s back is to her. _Don’t open any more boxes._

And yet—

“I can’t break up with him,” she blurts. When she opens her eyes, Cheryl is facing her, expression surprisingly empathetic. “I know what I said the other day—but, I mean, I _couldn’t_. That’s practically twisting the mother-of-pearl knife right in his back. After all, his father _just_ _died_.”

“Well, so did mine,” she replies coolly. Veronica resists the urge to flinch—this is truly a hellish town. “And speaking from that woeful perspective, I think I’d find it much more detestable to be strung along out of pity.”

Veronica sweeps a lock of hair back, fiddling with the new pearl earring. She exhales. “It’s not stringing someone along if you care for them. It’s not _pity_.”

“But what’s the endgame here?” Cheryl asks, tone growing impatient. “Ignoring the fact that I personally believe you can do _so_ much better than that anthropomorphic golden retriever, are you really going to do long distance till college? What if you don’t get into the same school, let alone somewhere in the same stone’s throw? Then what?”

Veronica briefly closes her eyes again. She’s been having these thoughts, but it feels strangely cathartic to hear someone voice them aloud to her. Not that it makes them any more of an option—after all, if she picks that apple from the tree, what kind of person would that make her?

And there it is; the thought she’s put off allowing, though simmering as it’s been—because how can she style herself as this reformed, newly good person if she can’t even be a _passable_ girlfriend to someone who has just experienced the most painful loss imaginable?

“Okay, let’s just shelve the pretense for why I’m here,” Cheryl says, again almost sounding insulted. “Clearly, you invited _me_ over to play hot potato with the Bechdel test for a _reason_ , Veronica. Not Little Miss Muffet. Because you _know_ she won’t tell you what you need to hear—which is that this has to _end_ at some point, for both your sakes.”

“Cheryl—”

“I don’t say that to be cruel; even I’ve grown fond of my dear, sweet cousin,” she adds dryly, seeing Veronica’s look. Her voice hardens. “But Betty thinks anything can be fixed or saved. She never asks if everything  _should_ be.”

Veronica absorbs that with her fingers tracing absentmindedly over her pearls. Perhaps Cheryl makes a point. Perhaps she makes several.

“But I care about him,” Veronica murmurs, glancing at her hands.

The smaller voice, the one that sounds like her own if it were distorted and muffled by glass, asks her if that’s true. If good, _kind_ Archie loving her is the only thing that means she’s good and kind too. Take that away— _push_ him away, and what would that make her?

“Well then, I’m sure you’ve heard the old adage, _chérie_. If you care about something, set it free,” Cheryl says, almost as though reading her mind. Cheryl’s expression pinches, and Veronica wonders if she’s thinking of her brother.

Veronica once more stares down at her hands, realizing that—as usual—she’s being selfish.

She’s only been thinking of the break up in terms of herself, what it would say about her—but maybe if she were actually a good person, or even trying to be, she’d let him have his best chance.

She thinks of Archie, nearly a thousand miles away, his new home, his new school, making new friends, staring over, and wonders: wasn’t the point of moving—to move on?

Meanwhile, Cheryl shakes her head pointedly, as if clearing her own thought, and returns to the closet. She holds up a black sweater with a red scallop trim, pausing to give it a once over. “Hm. Can I have this?”

Veronica sighs and slides down fully onto her bed, chin propped up by her hand. The sheets feel suddenly cold to the touch.

“Take it,” she says softly. “There’s no room for it anymore.”

**

**

**

**

On the day of Thanksgiving, everything for the Cooper-and-wayward-Jones dinner has been arranged.

Almost as if she’d expected this, Betty had barely blinked before saying she’d be more than happy to make room at the table for the remnant Joneses; his sister was thrilled with the plan, and his mother remained less than so, but there was only one opinion he really cared about, so to the Coopers they would go.

Betty had insisted they didn’t even need to bring anything, that she and her family had been prepping all week—which means, when he leaves the Topazes in the afternoon and bids them a happy Thanksgiving of their own, Vegas tugging merrily at the leash, he’s more than surprised to see Gladys puttering around the kitchen and a bag of flour precariously perched on the little Formica table.

She glances over at the door just as he and the dog enter, a smudge of something white on her face and more than one loose strand of hair falling around her face. The full effect of the scene nearly makes him stumble; he can’t remember the last time he saw his mom making anything other than grilled cheese.

Meanwhile, Vegas has slipped from Jughead’s grip and promptly bounds for the sweet smells of butter wafting through the trailer. “Oh god, Vegas, _no,”_ she mutters, pushing the dog away from the table just barely in time.

“Sorry, Mom,” Jughead sighs, trapping the leash under his boot until he’s close enough to hold onto Vegas by the collar. He glances once more at the kitchen table and sees a bag of chocolate chips and eggs and flour scattered half-across it. “You’re _baking?_ There’s not…weed in them, is there?”

Gladys shoots him an unenthusiastic look. “You have the Devil’s wit, baby,” she says flatly. “Although I would give up a paycheck to see Alice Cooper stoned, I believe she’d have me arrested for that, and I’m not about to finally give her the excuse. I _also_ think she won’t let us in the house if I bring something store-bought, so…I’m trying to make cookies.”

Jughead raises his eyebrows, unsure how he feels about his mother making an effort. “Really?”

She exhales, and a string of hair blows off her forehead, clearly flustered—though whether by his suspicion or the act of baking itself, he’s not sure. “It’s all I know how to make. I’m almost done and need to take a shower. Can you just go make sure your sister is…not…doing something she’s not supposed to be doing?”

“Glad _some_ things haven’t changed,” Jughead mumbles under his breath, though not as quietly as he thinks, because as he brushes past her, his mother tenses. Vegas doesn’t take kindly to being shepherded away from the kitchen, but nevertheless, they both head down into the spare bedroom.

His sister is laying with her back on the bed, her feet against the wall, a pair of headphones pulsing around her ears. Her hair has been braided into two plaits and besides the fact that she’s sans shoes, Jughead thinks this must be the fanciest outfit she owns; she’s wearing a black velvet dress with a large dark bow and black tights. It looks vintage, but nice all the same.

She doesn’t even look up as they enter; it’s only when Vegas bounds over to lick her hand does she seem to realize they’re there. Jellybean pulls the headphones down and instantly he hears a roar of music through the speakers. “Are we leaving for Betty’s yet?”

“Nope,” he replies, plopping down beside her on the creaky bed. “Did you know Mom was baking cookies?”

She shoots him a funny look. “She’s been doing weird stuff like that since we went to Ohio. I think Grandma makes her.”

“How is ol’ Gran?” Jughead asks, a bit witheringly. “Last time we talked…”

“Oh, she still gets mad at me if I put my hands on the wall. Says I’ll get smudges on it, like I’m six,” Jellybean mutters darkly. “I hate living with her. She’s so mean.”

“You think she’s mean to you? Try being the literal bastard child who ruined her daughter’s life,” he replies, nudging her with his shoulder and grinning, though she doesn’t return it.

Her eyebrows knot together thoughtfully. “I don’t think you’re a… They got married, so…”

He waves a hand. “Semantics. It really doesn’t matter, Jellybean. I was mostly kidding.”

But she’s still looking at him, eyes wide and nibbling on a thought. Eventually, she just says, “I wanna be called JB now. I told you.”

“Right, sorry. JB,” he corrects, scooting back so he can lean fully against the wall. “A lot’s changed. I’ll catch up.”

His sister’s eyes sweep up around the spare bedroom, lingering on the corner filled with newspaper clippings, index cards, and red yarn. She doesn’t say anything for a long, painful moment; just stares. Her eyes then dart to Vegas, as if finally figuring out the riddle of his presence.

“I can’t believe Mr. Andrews—” But she stops there, and doesn’t seem to want to finish the sentence.

Jughead wouldn’t want to either, especially not today. This time last year, they were with Fred and Archie, settling down at their table, Vegas lingering for scraps, the smell of turkey and All-American-pie wafting across his memories. “I know,” he exhales.

JB flicks her eyes back over to the murder board corner, crackling music still lifting out of the headphones around her shoulders. It hangs in the air like static, and he tries to place the angry guitar riff. Sounds (and smells) like Teen Spirit.  

After another long moment, he hears, “Jughead, what did Dad _do?”_ Surprised at the sudden change in subject, let alone _that_ subject, he twists his neck to look at her. She appears annoyed as she adds, “Mom won’t tell me anything. She keeps saying I’m not old enough to know, but that just makes me—I’m practically eleven. I _have_ an imagination, Jug.”

He lets his head fall back against the wall with a dull _thump_. Of course this would somehow fall to his responsibility. “Dad…did something really stupid, and then he did something really brave.”

Foolishly, he hopes she’ll let it end there and accept that, but JB just looks at him expectantly, waiting for more. He clears his throat. “He got…tangled up in someone else’s web. He did some stuff he shouldn’t have for that person. And when it all blew up, Dad went down with it too.” He shifts to face her, inexplicably wanting her to understand the second part best. “But when that happened, the police wanted him to turn on his friends. Turn on people with families, in exchange for a lighter sentence for himself. A lot of lives could’ve been ruined, but Dad didn’t do it.”

JB lets out a small, curious noise in the back of her throat, staring down at her crossed legs. After a thoughtful moment, she says, “Mom says I can’t visit him right now.”

Privately, Jughead is actually unsure if FP _would_ even want his daughter seeing him behind plexiglass, and for once, maybe agrees with their mother. “You will,” he replies, forcing a tight smile.

She glances up at him. “But is he…is he… He’s in _prison.”_

He presses his lips together, dropping the pretense of the smile. “I know.”

“But doesn’t that make him—doesn’t that make Dad a bad person, Jughead?”

He used to wonder that too. Often, in fact. Jughead looks at his baby sister, her eyes so wide, can’t decide if she seems older or younger in this moment, let alone what level of truth she deserves right now. 

Jughead turns his eyes upwards. Trails them over the mostly-torn-down posters and remnants of tape and rebellion from his father’s youth. This used to be his bedroom, growing up. And now it’s just a shrine to the mystery of Fred’s killer.

His attention lingers on the most recent addition; a few days ago, he'd scribbled  _RIVERDALE REAPER?_  in red sharpie, and the words appear to glare at him now. Then he looks at his sister’s suitcase in here by the door. If she slept alongside a murderboard, it’s probably past the point of being vague. 

After a long moment of staring, he sighs and glances back at her. His throat feels oddly dry. “You know JB, I don’t really think it works like that.”

**

About an hour and a half later, after their mother has piled her dark hair into a knot and arranged the cookies on a tray, the three of them amble into Gladys’ beat up old Buick—the likes of which has made it back and forth between Toledo and Riverdale a surprising number of times given the amount of miles it’s storing—and make their way north.

They park in front of the Coopers’, but Jughead stares at the Andrews’ next door. In the front lawn sits a primly printed FOR SALE sign, and it makes his chest squeeze tightly.

He’d known this was happening, but it’s still another thing to see it there, plain as day. He wonders how long it’s been up, and why Betty hasn’t mentioned anything.

Jughead feels a hand on his shoulder, and is surprised to see his mother looking at him with a sympathetic sort of smile. But she urges him forward, as if silently telling him it’s not worth lingering.

His fist has barely rapped once against the wood before the front door swings open. “Hello, Jug-head,” Alice says, one hand curled around the edge. He suppresses a sigh at her continual tendency to shove a hyphen into his name, no matter how many times Betty will glare at her mother.

“Hi, Mrs. C,” he replies bullishly.

(If he has to be Jug-hyphen-head, she can be Mrs. C. Fuck it.)

(It’s possible that Toni is rubbing off on him.)

Alice’s lip curls into something that wavers on the precipice of a sneer. It’d seemed like she was warming to him, once upon a time, but that had clearly been a phase. And then her eyes are flicking behind Jughead, onto his mother, narrowing sharply.

“Gladys!” She greets, far too peppy for it not to be calculated. “It’s been a long time. When Betty told me Jughead was bringing his family, I have to admit, I was surprised. Here I’d had the impression that you’d moved on to new pastures.”

Jughead turns to see his mother plastering on a weak attempt at a smile. She lifts the tray of baked goods up. “Thank you for having us, Alice. I made cookies.”

“Cookies,” Alice repeats, still smiling brightly as she takes the tray from his mother. “Well, usually it is customary for guests to bring a pumpkin _pie_ or even roast vegetables to a Thanksgiving meal, but—cookies. Of course, spontaneity was always your specialty, wasn’t it Gladys?”

Before his mother can reply, Alice is already turning on her heels and click-clacking back through the foyer of her house. Jughead glances back just in time to see Gladys rolling her eyes straight at the sky and mumbling a curse under her breath.  

“Are we going in or not?” his sister asks dryly.

Jughead exhales, throws an arm around his little sister, and shepherds them both inside. A moment later, he can hear their mother dragging her feet behind them.

The scene in the Cooper house is warmly aglow with golden light, suspiciously real-looking autumn leaves strung lovingly along a banister, and the wafting smells of savory spices drift lazily under his nose. Alice appears to have gone all out; he’s been to Betty’s house around the holidays before, but never with all the trimmings out on display to this extent. Truthfully, he feels like he’s walked into some kind of pre-Friedan ad in the back of _Good Housekeeping_ magazine.

“Yeesh, I forgot how nice this place is,” JB mutters, shedding out of her coat, eyes trailing across the view. Her expression is a little greedy, and Jughead suddenly remembers his sister’s penchant for sticking things that don’t belong to her into her pockets. 

Hal Cooper seems to materialize out of nowhere; possibly from the void where vintage _Saturday Evening Post_ copies disappear. He smiles at them. “Can I take your coats? Betty’s in the kitchen, helping prep dinner.”

JB and Jughead both pass their coats to his waiting arm, but his mother appears to genuinely hesitate. And then unties her leather trench belt, and slowly lets the coat fall from her shoulders, looking more uncomfortable by the second. Almost as if she thinks that if she doesn’t keep her coat in sight at all times, she won’t be able to leave.

Which is probably true, he decides, leaving his mother standing in the foyer. JB lingers, but he wants to say hi to Betty. He finds her as her father said, in the kitchen tossing a salad. He moves behind her, and kisses her just under her ear, which makes her laugh and twist in his arms.

She greets him with a kiss of her own—just a quick one, as Jughead suspects Alice is hiding around some corner, prepared to shove a ruler between their bodies. She doesn’t stop his hands from snaking up around her waist, however, and just beams at him as her own arms settle over his shoulders.

He grins goofily back at her. “You seem like you’re in a good mood.”

“Of course I am,” she says warmly, one of her hands cupping at his jaw. “I have my whole family with me for Thanksgiving.”

His chest swells, and Alice be damned, he kisses her again.

After a minute, or possibly ten, she giggles against his mouth and pulls back. “Juggie. Are you _trying_ to piss off my mom?”

“Maybe,” he replies, and lets her untangle herself from his grip. Betty throws him an amused look as she slips around the other side of the kitchen island to pick up a plate of pigs-in-a-blanket from the counter.

He plucks one off and throws it into his mouth, reveling in the taste. He chews, and spots his mother appearing to struggle through polite conversation with Hal Cooper, still back in the foyer. Alice is in the dining room now, fussing over silverware settings, and his little sister is at the bottom of the stairwell, staring up it with interest. He supposes Polly is around here somewhere.

(He’d also half-expected Cheryl Blossom to be lording around somewhere tonight, but he hasn’t yet had a whiff of her disgustingly sweet maple perfume, so it’s possible she won’t make an appearance. God willing, anyway.)

Jughead turns back to Betty, a thought occurring to him. “Hey, have you kinda gotten the sense your mom doesn’t like my mom?”

Betty raises an eyebrow and puts down the plate. “Seriously, Jughead? This is Alice Cooper we’re talking about. I think the only person she inherently respects is probably Margaret Thatcher,” she says dully, and he snorts. “Don’t be paranoid.”

“Yeah, but I’m so good at that,” he mumbles, gaze flicking between both women, still rooms apart.

Betty has sidled up beside him again. “Don’t worry, tonight is gonna be great. Let’s just focus on the positive—we’re both here, my mom and Polly and I have been cooking for twenty-four-hours, and we’re gonna have a really nice dinner with our families mostly all together. I mean, it was weird, at first, my parents acting like nothing had changed. But after Fred… It’s actually been _nice,_  having some normalcy. Or consistency, at least.”

She trails off, biting her lip, and then smiles firmly at him, almost as if forcefully pulling herself out of a thought. “Anyway, I was even thinking we could make this a monthly thing. You know, just to start. Maybe in a little while we could move it to twice a month, but I thought we should ease int—”

“Betts, have you heard the one about the cart and the horse?” He interrupts, throwing her a dim, warning look.

Her bottom lip juts out slightly. “What do you mean?”

He sighs, and runs a hand down her arm. “They’re not staying.” She blinks at him. “They’re just here for Thanksgiving. It was my sister’s idea, I think,” he adds slowly, not knowing what to make of her apparent confusion. He’s _told_ her about his mom several times over.

After a moment, Betty seems to decide she doesn’t believe him, because she just shakes her head. “Did your mom really tell you that? Specifically, that she was leaving afterwards?”

“She doesn’t have to. A, my sister _would’ve_ told me, and B, I _saw_ the size of their suitcases,” he says flatly.

“Okay, but if your mom didn’t actually say anything, maybe this doesn’t mean what you think it means,” Betty counters, throwing him a knowing smile. “She’s your _mother_ , Jughead. I know we talked about it the other day, and I get things are complicated, but I seriously doubt she wants to see you in the foster system.”

“I’m doing fine with Thomas and Toni.” Jughead exhales noisily, thinking that she doesn’t get it at all. Betty’s family is definitely messed up too, he knows that, but at least both of her parents are around permanently. And _want_ to be around. “It’s really not that different from when I was crashing with the Andrews.”

Her face changes at once; something far more closed off than he’s used to on her normally expressive face, so he hastens to add, “Besides, don’t you remember what happened the _last_ time we tried a Jones-Cooper family dinner?” He levels her with a dubious look.

“This is different,” Betty says, shoulders rising.

“No, it’s not,” he replies, voice growing firmer. “And honestly Betty, I don’t really want to talk about it.”

That seems to be the wrong thing to have said, however, because Betty’s eyes bulge and her hands go to her hips. “Of course you don’t,” she mutters lowly. “After all, what _do_ you want to talk about anymore that isn’t murder?”

For a moment, he just stares at her. “Should I apologize for being preoccupied with the _death_ of my _best friend’s_ father? Christ, I thought we were in this together.”

Betty huffs, but the anger flickers from her face. “I just meant…” She sighs again. “You’re right. Of course we’re in this together. Of course. But every time I try— Juggie, I just want to find a way to the point where some things feel _normal._  Back to how they were before.”

“This _is_ our normal, Betty,” he says after a beat. There’s an unfinished sentence there, but he knows he’ll hear it one day, and ideally not on a night when the handful of their remaining family members are not within earshot. He rubs at her shoulder, hoping it’ll get her to look at him again. “At least for us. Murder board, solving crimes…”

She draws her bottom lip between her teeth once more, eyes wide as they scan over him. “But we can do both, right? Be a regular couple and be…”

“Super sleuths?” He supplies dryly, lifting an eyebrow. “Yeah. Duh.”

“Well then…” Betty’s hands leave her hips and slap against her thighs. She seems exasperated. “Can’t you at least _consider_ the family dinner idea? I want us to have _something_ that isn’t all about blood splatter, Jughead.”

“I told you, she’s not—” He starts again, but at the look on his girlfriend’s face, drops it. “Look, I can’t promise a big family dinner thing will work, let alone exist as a feasible option. But you and I can still have dinner. At Pop’s. Twice a week, bare minimum.” He pauses to grin at her, which she deliberately seems not to return. “Kosher?”

“I…” She shrugs and then gives way to a small smile of her own, almost as if pleased in spite of herself. “It’s a start.”

“Good,” he says, though she’s still looking at him in a funny way. “Betty. You’re gonna let this go, right?”

Betty exhales and nods at him. There’s a strange determination in her eyes and he’s going to choose to believe that comes per his request and not something of her own agenda.

“Yeah, Jug,” she says quietly. Her hands grip the countertop behind her. “I’ll let this go.”

**

 ** 

 ** 

**

Jughead kisses her just at the corner of her mouth, picks up the platter of pigs-in-a-blanket, and leaves the kitchen for the dining room, where her mother is still fussing with place settings. Betty watches as Alice turns her head, just fractionally, and then redirects Jughead towards the living room, where Polly is still engrossed in her reading, as she has been for over an hour now.

Betty frowns. For whatever she may have told her boyfriend not to be paranoid, truthfully, her mother _hadn’t_ seemed thrilled to include the rest of Jughead’s family. That in and of itself wasn’t unusual, though; there were plenty of notable times that even people as pure of heart as Fred Andrews had made Alice Cooper’s shit list, but—it did seem that the mere mention of Gladys Jones had made her mother’s eyes narrow like the slits of a snake.

She tries to draw a line through her childhood memories for some clue or explanation—but they’re clouded, hazy recollections in the shroud of Archie. For he’s still luminous through the eyes of a smitten ten year old, drawing together on the floor, a tent in his backyard, tin cans between their windows, him helping her hide stick-on-stars in her closet where her mother couldn’t see them and the later wishes she made upon them—

And she doesn’t have those same, viscerally nostalgic memories of Jughead. Not in that way. There are a few—him lying on a beanbag in Archie’s room, staring at the ceiling and rambling about _Catcher in the Rye,_  or the few times he’d help her carry some of her extra books down the hallway, or being the only one to catch her jokes at the lunch table, his smile wry and amused and just for her.

She wishes, more than anything, that she had more than those scraps. Wishes she could go back in time and rewrite history so that she would’ve _noticed_ him more, perhaps see him seeing her, or thought of him more as her own, possibly truest, friend and not just the third arm of Archie.

How stupid she’d felt to have realized she didn’t know her own boyfriend’s birthday, how silly it was that she couldn’t remember meeting his father. She _does_ recall Gladys, a little bit, but only as the head sticking out of a truck as Jughead was dropped off at the Andrews’, or as the woman smoking against a fence while the rest of the parents waited to pick up their kids from school, a respectable distance away.

But in those memories, there’s nothing about her mother and Jughead’s mother even _interacting,_  let alone find cause to dislike one another. Every play date between the three of them was carefully orchestrated by Mary and Fred, after all.

 _Still,_ she reasons, pulling herself out of her thoughts. Like she said to Jughead, Alice Cooper barely needs an excuse to loathe anyone. She just does.

And besides, in the end, her mother had agreed to let them come to Thanksgiving. So their history couldn’t be _all_ bad, if there actually was anything there.

Betty tightens her ponytail, dismisses the thought, and marches towards Jughead, who has seemingly been instructed to sit on the couch. His fingers drum idly on his knees, though his eyes are fixed curiously on Polly.

She tries not to audibly sigh. Betty doubts her sister has so much as looked up from that stupid book since she plopped down with it an hour ago. Polly has tried to push it onto Betty a few times, but given it was titled _Never Say Never_ and written by a person self-styled as Edgar _Evernever,_ she hasn’t felt inclined.

Jughead appears to be studying the cover of the book, which proudly displays an ornate drawing of a tree, all its branches fractioning off across the front.  “Studying up on alliteration, Polly?” he asks, clearly stifling his amusement as Betty joins him on the couch.

Polly lifts her eyes slowly from the page. She half-closes the cover as if to reread the title. “Oh. That’s very funny, Jughead,” she says warmly, but flatly, though she still smiles broadly as if it truly _was_ hilarious. Betty’s frown deepens. Her sister has been acting strangely ever since she got her hands on that book—she claims it had belonged to Jason, that his grandmother had wanted Polly to have it, but—

“Oh, god, again with the book,” Alice mutters, appearing out of nowhere to pluck it out of Polly’s hands. “We have _guests_ , Pauline.”  

“Yes, and I was planning on _sharing_ the book with the guests, Mother,” Polly replies, now clearly more annoyed as she pushes herself to her feet. She turns back to face Jughead. “I think you would really like it. It’s all about finding the power of self in the face of trauma. Channeling grief for the purp—”

“Polly,” Betty interrupts, eyes pleading with her sister. The last thing they need is to open the floodgates on _grief_. Again. “Can we not for today? Please?”

“We’re about to eat, anyway,” Alice says, sighing. Jughead glances around, as if realizing he doesn’t see his mother or sister, and she seems to notice. “Hal is giving your family a tour, Jug-head. _Why_ , I don’t know, but we should sit down anyway.”

So up they all shuffle, and just as they’re resettling at the dining table, her father, Gladys, and Jellybean—or, JB, as Betty was informed to now call her—all appear at the base of the stairs, having seemingly finished the tour. In some ways, Betty agrees with her mother, as she’s not really sure what there is to show in the house, but JB does still look a bit wide-eyed, so she drops the thought.

Alice flashes a gleaming silver knife. “Hal, maybe you’d like to carve the turkey now that we’re all here?”

But her father just turns and smiles down at Jughead, seated next to the head of the table, and instead passes along the knife to him. “Actually, maybe Jughead would like to,” he says, almost in an announcer’s voice. “I can serve it as you cut it up, son.”

Jughead, strangely, turns pale, but after a moment dutifully scoots his chair back in order to stand. Across the table, he spares Betty a nervous look as he takes the spearing fork.

He works quietly, Hal Cooper in tandem, and before long, everyone has been sliced and served an oblong piece of turkey. He re-takes his seat and they eat through light chatter; she watches as the color slowly returns to his face, and wonders why that threw him so off. Her father was just being friendly, but it looks like Jughead has just seen a ghost.

After a while, Betty taps her knife gently against her glass, beaming around the table. “Should we start?”

Jughead swallows, passing her a funny look. “We’re already eating.”

“No, I meant, start going around and saying what we’re thankful for? I can go first.” She inhales, still smiling. “After everything that has happened this year, I’m all the more thankful to have my whole family together at the table with me, including my boyfriend, Jughead. And I can’t wait to get to know his family even better, too, so thank you both for coming,” she adds, just to Gladys and JB, who smiles back at her.

Although he does appear touched, Jughead’s look is also somewhat warning, and she can’t help but think about what she promised him back in the kitchen, that she would let this all go—and she _will_ , she _is_ , truly, but…she also wants his mother to know she’s welcome.

And if she does feel included, she’ll be more inclined to stay, and that’ll keep Jughead away from the Serpent mess. But it’s still keeping her promise. It is. That’s all she’ll say about it.

“I’ll go next,” Polly says from beside her, interrupting the thought. She puts down her fork and runs her hands over the swelling curve of her stomach. “Although this year has been…so very painful in many ways, I am thankful to be moving forward, and for the tools I’ve been given to embrace my pain for the better. I’m also thankful for this beautiful harvest from our Earth Mother, and of course, for my little saplings.”

There’s an almost painfully awkward silence that follows; Betty sees JB jump slightly in her chair and thinks Jughead might’ve just kicked her under the table. JB’s lips press together tightly as if to bury a grin, but Polly doesn’t seem to notice at all. She just smiles down at her stomach.

Betty glances over and sees that Jughead’s mother is also staring at Polly’s swollen belly, only her expression is strange and tight, almost fraught.

Polly often gets odd looks from strangers, but this is not the typical sympathetic frown for a teenage mother. Alice appears to notice as well, because her eyes are flicking between the two thoughtfully before clearing her throat.

“Well. My turn,” she says, raising her neck so that her hair flips around her shoulders. “I’m incredibly thankful for my family staying together despite our hardships. It’s important, and I’m grateful we’re all here and sticking to our roots through this absurd, Moses-like trial by fire.”

To the left of her, Gladys coughs, but it really sounds like a poorly stifled guffaw, and everyone turns to look at her. Alice raises a challenging eyebrow, but Gladys just presses a hand to her collarbone.

“Pardon me,” she says quietly. “Snake in my throat.”

“I’m sorry, was that supposed to be funny?” Alice asks, voice clipped. “Or was there something you wanted to say?”

Betty glances at Jughead, who looks about as concerned as she feels, and then they both turn to stare at their own mothers. Though she doesn’t know her well, Betty thinks she can see some kind of momentum building in Gladys’s expression. Still, she clearly chooses to hold her tongue.

“Thought so,” Alice goads, and immediately, Betty can tell it’s a mistake by the way Gladys’s eyes flash. In that moment, Betty sees the resemblance between mother and son; sees it in the way they both press their lips together and steel for an argument. She sees her face harden over, the glimmer of a furious woman Betty thinks she might have once been. 

“Since you asked, I just think it’s kind of interesting,” she replies, eyebrows lifting coolly. “’Sticking to our roots.’ A little ironic, right Alice?”

“Remind me _where_ your roots are, before you blew through this town like a tropical depression?” Alice snaps in response, looking more and more cobra-like by the second.

Gladys smiles ruefully and shakes her head. “I’m from Toledo, Alice. But I’ve never pretended otherwise, unlike you.”

Her mother’s eyes widen threateningly, but Betty is faster. “Mom, what does that mean?”

“Uh, Betty—” Her father starts, summoning his familiar, placating tone.

“A snake never forgets, so don’t think I don’t remember how rude you’ve always been to my son, Alice, even though he grew up in _your_ very own trailer park. It’s funny. All your machinations to move up in the world, and here you still are, slumming with us,” Gladys says mirthlessly, and as if it summons her last bit of strength.

Alice bristles like pine in the wind. And then—she sneers, almost satisfied with herself. “Of course. All this time, and you’re still mad that I’m free of that ophidian world. And that _you_ never will be.”

Gladys throws her napkin on to the table and is already standing up. “Honestly, I can see this was a mistake. I think we should go.”

She scoots her chair back, and Betty bolts to her feet, her mind stumbling to catch up. How could this have gone so wrong so fast? What even just _happened?_ “Wait, wait— Let’s just have dessert before you go. I made pumpkin pie—”

“Betty, I’m sorry, you’re a lovely girl,” Gladys interrupts, sighing. “Thank you for inviting us. Really. I think it just wasn’t meant to be.”

JB slowly pushes her chair back and rises, but Jughead just sits there, shaking his head. His mouth forms a thin line, but eventually, and seemingly through sheer willpower alone, he takes his napkin off his lap and stands as well.

There’s an awkward, painful moment, and then Hal mumbles, “I’ll get your coats,” and all but sprints from the table. Alice downs an almost-full glass of white wine, while Polly blinks on confusedly, as if she’s just missed half the conversation. (Truthfully, Betty can relate.)

But before the thought can settle, Jughead storms towards the front door, and Betty quickly follows after him. “Please don’t go,” she whispers, even as she sees Gladys and JB moving towards the foyer. “I don’t understand what just happened.”

“I do,” he scoffs bitterly. “She didn’t want to come tonight, and so she picked the first fight she could find. She _always_ does this shit. She doesn’t say what she really wants to, so she builds it up into an argument and then uses it to run away,” he says lowly, eyes briefly closing with anger. “I’m sorry. We tried.”

Tears prick at her eyes, though she knows, rationally, crying wouldn’t help. Her fingers twitch.

But Jughead doesn’t even look at her, just stares over her shoulder, back towards the dining table.

When he speaks, his voice is low and hurt. “Why didn’t you ever tell me your mom was from the south side?”

Betty’s mouth opens and closes. In all the suddenness of what had just happened, she’d barely absorbed that part. Not really, anyway. Now, though, the thought takes the breath out of her—of course her mother has never liked to talk about her own childhood, let alone her deceased parents. Of course she still vacillates between suspicious and almost bitter about Jughead, even after all he’s done to help her. Of course Betty never knew, because that was the way her mother wanted it to be.

How did she not see it? How did she never _ask?_

It would explain some things, at least.

“I didn’t know,” she says softly. 

Finally, he looks at her. She’s not sure what to make of his expression.

At that moment, however, her father has returned with all of their coats, and Gladys wastes no time in pulling hers on. JB moves awkwardly between Betty and Jughead, glancing between the two. “Well,” she says, but doesn’t bother following it up.

“Good night, Betty. We did appreciate the invite,” Gladys sighs. She casts a look over at her son and appears to want to say something else, but instead just takes Betty’s hand and pats the top of it briefly. It’s almost as if she’s trying to telepathically thank her for something having to do with Jughead, but Betty isn’t quite sure what to make of it.

Gladys opens the door, and with a backwards glance, JB follows after her mother. Jughead lingers for a moment, expression mixing with ambivalence and frustration. Then he robotically kisses Betty on the cheek, and he too marches out into the night.

Betty moves as far as the front steps, watching them go. Jughead looks back, only once.

The Buick rumbles alive down the block, and she tips her head up, feeling a drop of something on her cheek. For a moment, she thinks she’s started crying.

But it’s just fresh snow, drifting down lazily from a dark and clouded sky. Soon, it’ll cover their footsteps, and it’ll be like they were never here at all.

 ** 

 ** 

**

**

The next morning, Jughead wakes late. His body feels strangely stiff and sore, and he cricks his neck as he pushes himself up against the pillow. For a moment, the room looks unfamiliar, like he’d forgotten that he had stomped through the snow back to the Topaz trailer. He sighs, then allows himself a moment of weighing his options—he can try to go back to sleep or he can, ideally, forcefully, stumble towards coffee.

The latter wins out, and he swings his legs off the bed and shuffles the short distance to the door. Vegas hops off with him, quickly darting towards the kitchen area of the trailer, where a pajama-clad Toni is sitting at the table with both a mug of coffee and what appears to be a small medley of Thanksgiving leftovers for breakfast.

“Gramps is out for the day,” she tells him, which is her way of saying they should make a second pot of coffee. Thomas Topaz doesn’t have too many rules, but he’s strangely firm on teenage caffeine intake. Something mumbled about _stunted growth._

Jughead chuckles wearily, and moves towards the coffee filters. He waits until the little machine creakily roars to life, and then sweeps up Toni’s leftovers. _“Hey,”_ she protests, her mouth half filled with food.

“We can add eggs to this, make it a bigger breakfast,” he mumbles.

That earns him a pair of raised eyebrows. “Good trick.” There’s a settled pause; he turns his back on her, but he suspects she’s still just watching him beat the eggs. “So. Your mom’s in town.”

She doesn’t phrase it like a question. Jughead glances back over his shoulder, just briefly. He wonders if the mysterious return of Gladys Jones was yesterday’s gossip at the Wyrm potluck. “Yep,” he says, darkly punctuating it with a hard _p_.

“Does that mean you’re moving out?”

“Survey says: doubtful,” Jughead sighs, pouring the stuffing and bits of turkey into the pan, though he decides to leave out Sweet Pea’s aforementioned pea soup from his breakfast medley. He lets the food sizzle through the silence, and then pours the egg batter in. The pan cracks and pops. “She’ll be gone by the end of the week, I’m sure.”

He turns around, facing Toni, and is surprised to see her expression twisted into something unreadable. It might be sadness, but it looks unfamiliar on her.

Eventually, she just says, “Well. At least she came. That’s more than I could say for mine.” Dully, she drums the table with the prongs of her fork. “Don’t even know where she is.”

Jughead stares at her, a strange edge slicing at his chest. He’s spent years—and last night, especially—thinking how nice it would be for someone (Betty) to understand what it was like growing up with such a jaded, flaky mother. To have a mother who wanted to be around, who wanted _him._

And he’s never been in the other chair, never once been looked before as a _have_ rather than as a _have not._

He’s not sure what to feel.

Toni ducks her head down, as if a little embarrassed. He shifts back to the pan, waiting for Rorschach in the eggs.

**

Betty texts him not long after, asking if she can come over. Jughead agrees readily—truthfully, he doesn’t like how last night ended and he wants to see her, and not just because he has unanswered questions—but figures they better hang at his dad’s trailer, because he’d also like to spend some time with his sister before she is dragged back to Ohio, possibly kicking and screaming.

Although he’s looking forward to a lazy, snowy afternoon with his girlfriend, his mood does sour a bit after he breaks video game plans with Archie; he won’t be able to use the Cooper’s television anytime foreseeable, at least. Archie predictably understands, but more than ever, Jughead can read between the lines.

 _(Oh, okay,_ Archie sends back. _I get it. No worries.)_

Toni slithers away sometime after breakfast, almost as if telepathically sensing that Betty is on her way over, and he wonders again what it is that his foster sister has against Betty. 

But then he thinks about Alice Cooper, who apparently grew up in this very trailer park, and he realizes there might be more to Toni’s grudge than met the eye. Maybe he should ask.

Maybe he shouldn’t.

Betty knocks, but rather than bring her inside, he just grabs his coat and the dog leash from the rack. There’s a lot he thinks about in the moment before he opens the door, but she looks pretty in her warm woolen trench, snow flecked around the collar, and instead of saying anything, he kisses her on the front steps. Her lips are cold, but feel wonderful against his mouth.

“Come on,” he murmurs, pulling back. Betty reaches for his hand, even taking off her mitten in order to lace their fingers. He opens his mouth to protest, thinking she should keep it on, but she just squeezes back. She doesn’t say anything.

They both watch as Vegas adds to his share of yellow snow, and then they make their way across the rest of the trailer park. The neighborhood is quiet under the blanket of fresh powder, and it feels peaceful, even as his thoughts buzz with the remnants of last night.

Along the way, he spots Fangs and a small horde of boys of varying ages sitting in lawn chairs around a fire, all buttoned up in their leather jackets and looking surprisingly cozy despite the chilled air.

Fangs waves cheerily at them as they pass, and Jughead waves back. Betty too lifts a hand.

The trailer is seemingly empty as they open the front door; he calls for his mom, but he doesn’t hear anything back. A moment later, he realizes the shower is running, so _someone_ is here. Likelier answer is JB, since she wouldn’t be anywhere else on her own.

He flicks on a light, which surprises Betty, but he just shrugs. “Apparently my mom turned the power back on.”

Betty raises her eyebrows, seemingly struggling to not smile. She succeeds, though turns her back to him a moment later as she silently unbuttons her coat. Jughead just stares at her, and for the first time, she opens her mouth. “What?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s just.” He smiles despite himself, and shrugs. “You got mad at me last night for not wanting to talk, but you haven’t said anything to me since you got here.”

Her lips wrestle with a grin, and then gives it away, as if realizing it too. “Sorry. I’ve just been thinking.”

His amusement fades. “Yeah. Me too. About your mom?”

At once, her expression sours. “I just can’t believe it,” she blurts, throwing her hands up in the air around her. “Last night, she downed half a bottle of wine and immediately disappeared—and then this morning she was already gone before I woke up. My dad said she was ‘Black Friday shopping’ before _he_ practically _ran_ to the office, and _Polly_ is so checked out I doubt she even _noticed_ any of this,” Betty spits, looking furious. Sharply, her hands bang at invisible doors. “She’s been lying to me this whole time!”

In a huff, Betty drops herself onto the couch, hands immediately cupping the edge of it. Sharply, her neck turns to him as he joins her. “Do you think she was a Serpent?”

He nearly laughs. Truthfully, that was the one element that he hadn’t considered. Alice Cooper, draped in dark, oiled leather? _Yeah, right._

“Come on, she of the Frilly Apron?”

Betty doesn’t look amused. “My mother is not the cover of a book, Jughead. She’s…. She can be intense, you know that.”

Jughead considers this. He supposes—yes, Alice is intimidating in the plainest sense of the word, but it’s still not an image he can totally reconcile. Still, he doesn’t exactly love the disapproving, faraway expression on Betty’s face. “Well…would it really change things if she was? A Serpent, I mean. She’s still your mom.”

She purses her lips. “Jug, she’s been lying to me,” she repeats. “Again.”

“Technically, she’s just been omitting the truth,” he counters lightly, trying to level the mood.

“Yeah, that’s the same thing,” Betty replies, like this is obvious. She runs a hand over her ponytail and he’s not sure he agrees; not entirely sure it’s always that _simple,_ but she’s already shaking her head off at nothing. “I mean, I knew she was a hypocrite, but I can’t believe she’s _that_ much of one. All those articles she’s written about taxpayers and zoning issues have been so transparently about the south side, and then I find out she’s grown up here!”

He can’t disagree with _that,_  but instead loops an arm around her shoulder, rubbing loose circles into her arm. Exhaling, she deflates into him, and they stay like that for a moment. “Look, Betts, if you really want to find out, there are ways.”

She sighs again, and he continues thumbing at her sweater. “If I ask her, she’ll probably just lie to me again. You know, once a month, she _promises_ me that there will be no more secrets or lies between us. And that’s never, ever true.”

Once again, he wonders if Alice Cooper possibly being a bygone Serpent is the true source of Toni’s animosity; if, to her, Betty is just the imprint of someone who got out. It’s a mildly believable theory, at least. And it would also explain the disaster that was last night— _if_ his mother and Alice _were_ both Serpents at one point, possibly even at the same time, no wonder there’s a rocky history there.

“Well, I could ask Toni. Her family has been with the gang for a long time; I bet she’d know,” he offers.

“No, I don’t want to hear it from her,” Betty says immediately, and almost bitterly. “I want to hear it from my mom.”

“That’s fair,” he agrees. He feels as though he should say something else, but doesn’t know what it would be. Instead, he thinks that in a weird, backwards way, it would almost be nice, if Alice actually had been a Serpent. Maybe that would help Betty feel a bit more comfortable here, in his world.

“Let’s just watch TV,” Betty says stubbornly, burrowing herself deeper into his side. “I don’t want to talk about her.”

“Well, we don’t _have_ to talk at all,” he suggests glibly, wiggling his eyebrows. It’s certainly not the first time he’s used that line, and he’s mostly joking, but they’ve also had a lot of interruptions lately, and—

She giggles against his flannel. “Juggie, we’re not alone here.”

As if on cue, the shower noticeably falls silent. “Tsk. Boys only want one thing,” he sighs, in a mock-deprecating voice, and she snickers again.

**

His sister emerges a few minutes later, and Betty offers to braid her hair into a complicated looking plait while it dries. They all sit together on the couch, watching _Planet Earth_ (the only thing the three of them could agree on) and munching on the baked goods Betty had stashed away in her backpack.

It’s nice. Really nice, he thinks. The kind of nice he knows better than to get used to—but, he can’t help the wish.

(When Jughead asks where their mom is, JB just responds with a cryptic kind of shrug.)

Later, as dusk settles past the hour and JB has taken herself to bed with her comic books, Betty glances back over her shoulder, expression shifting around whatever she sees in the view from the trailer window. “You know, it’s late. I think I should go home. I’m gonna call a Dryft.”

Jughead moves over the couch just in time to see his mother’s faraway long shadow shifting across the fresh snow like someone stretching black fabric taut between their hands. She’s been gone for hours—he almost wonders if she was at Shankshaw.

He wants to ask Betty to stay, but she probably should go. She’s definitely met her quota of family dysfunction this week.

“Yeah,” he sighs.

She opens her mouth, and then seems to think better of whatever it was going to be. “Night,” she says instead, leaning forward to peck him with a kiss. “Love you.”

“Love you too,” he repeats, blowing out a breath. He gets up and walks her to the door, watching as she draws on her coat and checks her phone.

“Oops, that was fast; the car is here.” She kisses him quickly once more, and opens the door—right onto Gladys, who jumps, clearly about to reach for her end of the handle. “Goodnight, Mrs. Jones,” Betty says, recovering quickly and sliding past her. His mother passes Betty a thin smile in response and returns the goodnight as she stomps the snow from her boots into the woven pad outside the door.

Jughead watches Betty go over his mother’s shoulders; she would probably tease him for worrying, but on a cold night, dead still under the new powdery snow, the trailer park is quiet, and he just wants to see her get into the car.

Betty carries mace, and he knows most of the Serpents would leave her alone, but—it’s late. It’s dark. There’s a killer out there.

She sees him watching, however, and waves at him from the open car door. And then the headlights move across his eyes as the car turns in the snow, Betty inside. Nevertheless, he waits until it’s out of sight before pivoting back around, where his mother still stands in the doorway. She hasn’t taken off her coat.

He fixes her with a suspicious look. “Where were you?”

Surprisingly, his mother just smiles, if albeit somewhat sadly. “Did you have a nice time with Betty?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles, attempting to move past her, but she reaches over onto the coat hook and hands him his shearling-lined jean jacket.

“Can we talk outside for a moment, baby?”

He bites the inside of his cheek. “Okay.”

He follows his mother out into the snow, her arms wrapped protectively around her body. To anyone else, it would look like she was merely cold. But he knows her better.

Another moment passes. “I’m…I’ve decided we’re staying,” she says, in a wobbly announcement.

There’s a long pause. “No, you’re not,” he finally scoffs, half-bewildered. “You say that now, but then you’ll be gone in two weeks.”

Her eyelids flutter with surprise, and then she recovers. “No,” she replies tightly. “I’ve already called your grandmother and my...work. I think—I think I have to stay.”

He gapes at her. “What? Since when?”

“Jughead, I think you need me,” Gladys says, her voice strange and forced, like she’s trying to summon authority over him. She’s not very good at it, and something about the attempt is straight up insulting.

“No, I don’t,” he bites back, not caring if she flinches. He’s done tiptoeing around his mother’s moods and he isn’t going to be jerked around again. “You haven’t been around to see it, but trust me, I’m just doing fine on my own!”

“You think you’re so grown up!” his mother snaps angrily, finally loosening her grip around her abdomen, hands flying up in the air. “And maybe you are, baby, maybe you really did have to change when we left. But this whole time I’ve been back here, all I can think about is—Jughead, you’re now the _same age_ that I was when I had you,” she says, voice dropping an octave. “I was _sixteen,_  and trust me, I thought I knew everything too.”

His breath heaves in the air between them, thick as a smokestack. Cold air bites at his cheeks, and he pretends he doesn’t see his sister watching at the window.

And strangely, for all his latent fears that he’ll turn into his father, for all the times he stares into the beady yellow eyes of an embroidered snake and hears the faint clink of glass across a room, Jughead now remembers FP’s rueful summary at Pop’s, a night that now feels a forever ago.  

_(Nah, he doesn’t care about that stuff, Fred. Football, sports. He takes after his mom._

_And I mean that as a compliment.)_

His father had sounded so confident about that. Proud, almost. Relieved, possibly—Jughead hadn’t understood it then, and he definitely doesn’t now.

But maybe he’d been wasting his time worrying about repeating his father’s choices. Maybe that’d been fate’s cruel misdirection.

Jughead hates the thought, and it burns going down.

And then— _No, no, no._ He would never abandon the people he cared about. Never.

Or would he?

After all, his gut instinct is usually to run. Quit before someone quits him. He’s already tried it on Betty once, at that ill-fated birthday party. Didn’t he learn that somewhere?

“I thought being a mother meant giving my kids the choices I didn’t get to have. I really did,” she whispers, and certainly more to herself, the lines in her face smoothing out. Her eyelids flutter up. “I need you to know that. Tell me you understand that.”

There—he thinks it again: his mother suddenly looks so young. His mother _is_ still young, he realizes.

Still, he crosses his arms all the more tightly. “No. I don’t.”

He remembers the looks from the other parents when she dropped him off at kindergarten, the whispers behind hands. The confusion on the playground that she was not his babysitter, but in fact, his mother.

Gladys Jones, now thirty-two, stares at her son. “We—I _had_ to have time away from your father. I had to. But I shouldn’t have let you choose to stay behind. I thought you had that right, and I didn’t exactly fight it. But I should’ve made you come with me. I see that now, baby.”

“Well, that’s too little, too late. I don’t need you anymore,” he says, though his voice finally breaks on it. “And I _know_ you don’t want to be here. You wouldn’t have even come home this week, if it weren’t for Jellybean. Just do me a favor and go back to Ohio, Mom.”

Gladys sniffs and shakes her head forcefully in a few short bursts. “I don’t think I’m supposed to do that.”

He scoffs. “Says who? Since when do _you_ do what people expect?” She doesn’t respond, though she does scrunch up her nose. Jughead glares at her, forcing himself to test her again. “You hated Riverdale, remember? You hated your job. You hated this trailer park.” _(You hated_ me, _didn’t you?)_

_(For looking like him?)_

He cannot ask that, couldn’t risk the truth, but she traces her eyes over his face in a way that makes him wonder if she can hear the thoughts anyway. He doesn’t get an answer either way.

She exhales shakily. Then, “This is final,” she says, in that same, unnaturally dogmatic voice.

The will to argue burns right out of him. Maybe—it’s—it’s possible there’s a part of him that wants her to stay, but—she’ll leave again. He _knows_ she will, so Jughead summons one last fury into his voice. “What if I _want_ to stay with the Topazes? Thought you were so big on free will, Mom. What happened to my say in all of this?”

Gladys, somehow, smiles. It’s not exactly happy, but he can’t put his finger on what else it is. “I think,” she says, inhaling sharply, “sometimes, you don’t get one.”

 ** 

 ** 

**

**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just---i've been receiving a lot of harassment about falice so for the sake of that i'm going to say falice is not happening in this story. i promise. there was no way to write these women without some antagonism. and it's also probably obvious by now, but this is not canon gladys. we planned this and the chapter was written well before we got the casting information; after discussing it, we decided to stick to our plan. ours is more of a tragic lorelai gilmore than the face-tattooed gladys we seem to be getting in s3. so just... laying that out now. 
> 
> listening playlist: 
> 
> 1\. you may be blue - vetiver  
> 2\. sometimes i feel like a motherless child - michael kiwanuka  
> 3\. seven words - weyes blood  
> 4\. mr. sandman - the chordettes  
> 5\. beach house - the cave singers  
> 6\. a hard rain's gonna fall - bob dylan


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